On March 30, 1943, two days after the suicide of Voroshilov, the former commander-in-chief of the enemy of the Stalingrad Front of the Soviet Army, the Battle of the Terek River ended!

In this remarkable battle, 335,000 people were killed and wounded on the Stalingrad side, and 531,000 surrendered, captured, or missing. More than 800,000 troops were devastated here.

The entire Stalingrad Front was equally devastated.

The Ernst Battle Group, the most elite unit of the German army, achieved an incredible victory here!

This was one of the most glorious victories in the history of the German army, and after this war, it basically laid the final direction of the Battle of Stalingrad.

As early as the 29th, the day before the end of the battle, the Germans had already launched a forced crossing of the Terek River, and with the troops at Malinovsky's disposal, it was difficult to resist the German attack from the sky and the ground.

But Malinovsky had to force himself to stay here and buy as much time as possible for Marshal Vasilevsky......

However, it seems that war is not a matter of personal will, and Malinovsky, even if he uses his skills, will not be able to stop the enemy's attack.

On the 31st, the Germans successfully crossed the Terek River!

At the same time as the victory of the Ernst battle cluster, the Manstein cluster and the Guderian cluster also routed the Soviet army on the Don River, encircling 350,000 Soviet troops.

On the 30th, on the very day that the Ernst battle cluster had taken the Battle of the Terek River, the Manstein cluster and the Guderian cluster wiped out the Soviet troops in the encirclement. After that, the forced crossing of the Don River was successful, and Karachi was occupied.

The German troops, which were sent by Turkey and attacked the Caucasus, were also overwhelming. The Soviets simply could not stop the simultaneous attack of the Germans from several directions......

Everywhere strategic points fell into the hands of the Germans, and the German advance troops were already very close to Stalingrad......

However, it is clear that the Russians have no intention of giving up, and fighting continues to break out on every front......

．．．．．．

The situation in Stalingrad was not optimistic, and in addition to the shortage of troops, the food problem also seriously troubled the Russians.

Vasilevsky urged Khrushchev to make a decision: to increase the ration of food rations for the population. The increase was insignificant - fifty grams for the workers, seventy-five grams for the extremely weak workers, the elderly and the children.

A Stalingrad woman wrote in her diary at the time: "I was awakened by a piece of news at seven o'clock in the morning - an increase in rations! The good news of the long-awaited increase in food suddenly fell from the sky when people were unprepared. Somehow, this plan was realized without any fanfare or panic...... People were informed of the news. I just ran to the bakery early in the morning. It is difficult to describe what the matter of the increase in rations has become, and how many things have been linked to it. Many people couldn't help but cry. Of course, the problem is not just food...... It's like a hole has been carved into an airtight wall. There is a living hope of salvation and confidence that our victory is assured. ”

On this day, at spontaneous rallies in the factories, millions of people confidently declared: "Now we have to persevere." We're going to stay the course! "Increasing food rationing. What they saw as a long-awaited ray of light to break through the darkness of the night of the siege was the beginning of an end to this dying, almost grave-like darkness.

Such a great event happened without publicity beforehand, and some people believe that it was arranged according to a kind intention: "It is better that the gift should always come by surprise." ”

But, in fact, there is no purpose here. The leaders in charge of the defense of Stalingrad had been agonically hesitant just yesterday before making the final decision to increase the rations. They know the truth. They are taking great risks. There were only about 900 tons of flour in the city. This stock of food is not enough to cover even two days.

Nevertheless, the decision to increase the ration had to be taken.

Under the ferocious fire of German artillery. They had to bring in more grain, but at the same time, the Germans were clearly not going to agree so easily.

The German air force continued to attack the Russian transport force, and a large number of German commandos began to appear more frequently, which made the transportation of the Soviet army extremely difficult and dangerous.

Attacks on convoys are constantly unfolding......

And as Ernst. Field Marshal Bream's Brandenburg commandos, which were very important, were once again engaged in the destruction of large-scale attacks on the Russians......

Earlier, the German 6th Army and Hort's tank army, with a beautiful drag-and-knife strategy, crushed the Soviet offensive under the command of the old Russian Marshal Budyonny in the Voronezh direction.

At the same time, Ernst. Marshal Bram was quietly plotting a bold move. This operation was considered "the most daring and possibly bizarre action" of World War II.

The task was assigned to the 1st Battalion of the 800th Construction Training Regiment in Brandenburg, and the 1st Battalion drew 62 volunteers from its subordinate "Baltic Company", all of whom were fluent in Russian, and their commander was the battalion's adjutant Adrian. Feng. Lieutenant Volksam.

Lieutenant Volksam was born on December 20, 1914, in Petersburg, Russia, to a senior German general in the service of the Tsarist Russian Navy. Fluent in Russian, English and German, Volksam studied economics at the universities of Berlin and Vienna.

In 1939, Volksam, who had excellent language skills, was recruited by the Military Espionage Bureau of the German General Staff to participate in the 800th Construction Training Camp in Brandenburg, the secret unit of the Espionage Bureau, which was very small at that time......

The 8th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 800th Construction Training Regiment in Brandenburg was responsible for carrying out this task, and the company planned to use a platoon to carry out the mission. The company's members were mostly Russians who volunteered to serve Germany, and fifteen of the twenty-four Russian-speaking personnel assigned to the mission were ethnic Russian spies from the German Military Intelligence Service. The commander of this detachment was also a Russian - Lieutenant Prohaska, who came from the former German minority settlement in Ukraine and spoke fluent German, although his mother tongue was Russian.

The distance from the front to their destination, the city of McKemp, was about a hundred kilometers, and how Lieutenant Franksum's squad could reach McKemp safely and secretly without being detected by the Soviets was the key to this bold plan.

The planners of the Brandenburg unit played a great role in the accumulation of information before and during the early years of the war, and the German field reconnaissance department paid great attention to the interrogation of Soviet prisoners of war before and after the outbreak of the war. The accumulation of a lot of information stems from the daily work of these intelligence officers, and the Germans, who worked very carefully, were well aware of some of the working procedures and details within the Soviet army, which was of great help to the infiltration work of the Brandenburg troops.

The details of this long-distance campaign are planned. Lieutenant Volksam himself was undoubtedly involved in part of this......

Lieutenant Volksam and a detachment of sixty men under his command, dressed in the uniform of the security forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, bid farewell to the German staff officers who saw them off, under the cover of darkness. Quietly crossed the forward positions of the Soviet troops. Infiltrated a Soviet village, which, according to intelligence from German front-line scouts, was home to a small group of Soviet soldiers from Ukraine and the Caucasus.

Previously, intelligence showed that the soldiers from the Caucasus often expressed dissatisfaction with the current Soviet regime, while soldiers from Ukraine generally acquiesced in these statements. Lieutenant Volksam, disguised as an officer of the security forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs under the pseudonym Major Truchin, led the disguised Brandenburg soldiers to deceive the guards, surround and disarm these sleeping Soviet troops.

The sleepy Soviet soldiers, whose eyes were clouded, were ordered to be sorted by ethnicity. The Caucasians were immediately taken to a section of the village, after which German special forces opened fire into the sky. Let the remaining Ukrainians in the village mistakenly believe that these Caucasians were all shot by the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs......

In fact, these Caucasians were escorted by the Germans to the other side of the battle line. The remaining Soviet soldiers, mainly from Ukraine, were reprimanded by Major Truchin, Lieutenant Volksam, for their "vacillation" and ordered them to board trucks to be escorted to McKemp to take them to "court-martial."

Volksam and his detachment disguised as a Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs unit escorted the Soviet soldiers all the way to the headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs security forces in McKemp.

The duties of the security forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR were subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR by the NKVD troops, who were stationed in large and medium-sized cities in the USSR before the war to undertake internal security and security work.

The NKVD troops were scattered in various large and medium-sized cities, and each unit was independent, for example, in some battles, although it was fully equipped and well-equipped, the Soviet army could not mobilize it to participate in the defensive battle of the city, and at the end it was the Soviet High Command that ordered the division to enter the battle. The independence of the NKVD troops can be seen from this. On the other hand, the scattered nature of the NKVD forces did not allow the local district affairs departments to have close contact with each other, which was different from the Soviet field troops. Under the torrential offensive of the German army, the Soviet command apparatus was in disarray, and the NKVD troops were probably no better there. It was precisely because the Germans figured this out that they adopted the practice of infiltrating the NKVD troops in disguise......

The approach of the German troops caused confusion in the Soviet troops. The assault team of Volksam was divided into three groups and began to carry out the task of planning and demarcating the elders. A group went to sabotage the general communication system, cut the telephone and telegraph lines to the front, and then this group took advantage of the chaos to quietly occupy the central telegraph office, answering all inquiries in an official tone and telegraphing that it would be abandoned, which is exactly what many Soviet civilians and troops wanted to see; Lieutenant Volksam commanded another group to occupy an important communication artery in Mackemp, and to perform the usual duties of the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops, to stop the retreat and improve morale, Volksam issued a series of erroneous orders for a Soviet anti-tank unit, an artillery unit, and an infantry unit to withdraw on the way to the front, which eventually caused a major collapse of the Soviet defensive line; The first two groups were to cooperate with the German offensive. The third group, which was tasked with protecting the oil fields and refineries, successfully prevented the attempts of the Soviet troops to sabotage the oil wells and refineries in order to achieve their goals. The members of the group accused the Soviet demolition detachment, which was responsible for blasting oil wells and refineries, of wrongly carrying out orders and shooting the entire Soviet demolition detachment.

The day after Volksam's assault team caused chaos in McKemp, the reconnaissance battalion of the 13th Panzer Division, the vanguard of the German attack on the armored forces, arrived six kilometers from the Blega River, and the second part of the German plan began to be executed. A detachment of more than 20 men under the command of Lieutenant Prohaska, disguised as a ragged Soviet soldier, mixed in a truck with the defeated Soviet army that was retreating towards Maikemp, and infiltrated the bridge over the Briga River.

Upon arrival at the bridge, the German commandos deliberately shouted in panic that behind them were the pursuing German armored assault troops, which caused confusion in the rout of the Soviet troops. The Brandenburg soldiers took advantage of the chaos and began to dismantle the blasting devices placed on the bridge. The commissar of the Soviet bridge guard tried to stop the chaos, but was pushed aside by the fleeing Soviet officers and soldiers. The Brandenburg commandos seized the bridge and held out until the arrival of the 13th Panzer Division, where the light tanks, which arrived in time, immediately passed through and joined up with Volksam's assault team.

It is a pity that the commander of this detachment, Ernst Brown. Lieutenant Prohaska was killed in the battle to defend the bridge......

Lieutenant Prohaska was the commander of the 8th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Brandenburg Regiment and was succeeded by Siegfred. After Captain Grabert. The second officer of the Brandenburg unit who died serving as the vanguard of the 13th Panzer Division. Captain Gerabert, who was killed in action for the 13th Panzer Division in the capture of the railway bridge over the Rostov River, was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross. Feng. Lieutenant Volksam was awarded the Knight's Cross for bravery in this battle. After the death of Lieutenant Prohaska, he was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross.

The main reason for the success of this operation should be attributed to the intelligence gathering of the German Military Intelligence Service on the duties and procedures of the security forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. There is no such information accumulated on a daily basis as a reference. It can be said that it is absolutely impossible for Volksam to camouflage NKVD troops to penetrate more than a hundred kilometers into the rear of the Soviet army......

．．．．．．

A series of victories made the morale of the entire German army unstoppable.

On the Stalingrad side, with the loss of McKemp, German troops from all sides began to pour into Stalingrad, and the brutal defense of Stalingrad was about to begin.

A large number of defeated troops retreated into Stalingrad, and there must have been a large number of German spies mixed in, which the Russians knew very well, but they could not solve it.

Vasilevsky now has no energy at all to think about these issues.

If he held Stalingrad, it was his primary concern

There is a shortage of soldiers here. Weapons are scarce, food is scarce. All the houses needed for war are scarce.

A telegram had already arrived from Moscow, telling Vasilevsky very clearly that in order to secure Moscow, the Stalingrad side would not be able to get reinforcements, but no matter how difficult it was, Stalingrad must not fall into the hands of the Germans!

When he heard this order, Vasilevsky could only smile bitterly

What kind of command is this? How can this be done? No one could give him an answer.

Even if Naming was to fill it again, Vasilevsky would not have so many troops.

The morale of the workers' and citizens' troops, who had been improvised was high, but the war could not be won by such troops

In mid-April, the German advance reached outside Stalingrad and engaged in an exchange of fire with Soviet troops there.

The vulnerability of the Soviet troops, which had suffered a crushing defeat, soon became apparent, and they simply could not withstand the surprise attack of the Germans.

At this rate, the Germans would soon be overwhelmed and Stalingrad would be covered under enemy fire......

Vasilevsky's prediction was correct, and the German planes finally appeared, and at the first time they launched an indiscriminate bombing of Stalingrad......

Stalingrad is trembling, the Russians are trembling...... In this way, Vasilevsky was not sure if he would be able to hold out for a full month......

Or...... Shorter time ......

Khrushchev also did everything he could, and almost all the civilian forces here were armed with him, and Vasilevsky could not have asked him to do better.

Now, leave everything to God's decision.

On the eve of the arrival of the German army, Vasilevsky constantly inspected the whole of Stalingrad and constantly inspected his own troops, and now, these people will be the last hope of Stalingrad.

One telegram after another from Moscow was nothing more than emphasizing the importance of Stalingrad and urging Vasilevsky not to throw the city named after the great Comrade Stalin to the Germans.

Do they really understand what is happening at the front? Vasilevsky never thinks so!

What else would those people do besides issuing some inexplicable orders? But their destructive power is staggering.

Not the destruction of the Germans, of course, but their own people. If it weren't for their indiscriminate command, perhaps the situation would be much better now.

Of course, such an idea Vasilevsky can only hide in the deepest part of his heart.

The war is about to overwhelm this place! (To be continued......)