"So, are we arrested now?" said the old man, with a hint of ridicule on his face, and asked the officer who came in with a smile, "You can arrest people now, but some people may resist." ”

The officer laughed, then walked up to the old man and said, "What are you kidding, I have brought people here to strengthen the security work here, after all, we are not sure that Moscow will send some real killers to kill you real heroes for the revival of Russia." ”

The old man finally couldn't help laughing, and his face was full of smugness. At this moment, he could finally be sure that he was out of Moscow's control, and at least in the territory of Chelyabinsk, he already had absolute dominance. This dominance was not easy to come by, and he endured it for many years before he took advantage of Stalin's weakness to begin his rise at this moment.

"Are the 50,000 troops drawn from Siberia and the Far East already in our hands?" the old man looked at a liaison officer in charge of the army behind him and asked another important part of today's meeting.

The liaison officer was obviously aware of this matter, and quickly replied: "The commanders of those units are obviously smart people, and they also know that they will not be able to return to their hometowns if they rush to Moscow. So they heeded our advice and walked very slowly. ”

He pointed to a huge map hanging on the wall, drew an approximate location on the east side, which was very far away from Moscow, and said with a smile: "Maybe we can't do such a thing as driving them to attack Moscow, but let them wait and see for two months, and they are still absolutely sure." ”

The old man at the head turned his attention to Valshilevsky, his confidant or like-minded assistant knew his every thought, and the tacit understanding between the two men could be described as perfect - this was the main reason for Valshilevsky's success in Chelyabinsk.

Without thinking about it, Valshilevsky immediately replied: "The 60 Stalin tanks produced in the factory this week, as well as 120 T-34 tanks, have been seized by us for various reasons. These arms will become bargaining chips in our hands in the future, and there will be no mistakes. ”

As a German superspy in the Soviet Union, and as the person who is now openly opposing Stalin, the resources at his disposal are actually greater than they appear to be. Thanks to the efforts of this super spy, Chelyabinsk's production capacity has been kept at a low level, and the mountains of raw materials and the production speed that has been wasted by the production process - to put it mildly, he alone killed at least 500 Soviet tanks, if not more.

This is the role of spies, if the two sides are equal in strength, these spies on the hidden front who usually seem to be far from generals and trump cards are the key to the outcome of the war.

What is even more fatal is not that Valshilevsky delayed the production of at least 500 tanks in the Soviet Union, but that he used his personal ability and influence to influence the position of the Soviet industrial region of Chelyabinsk. They chose to defect when Stalin needed support the most, and they chose to sit on the sidelines when the Soviet Union needed industrial power the most.

"Including the 400 tanks of various types and self-propelled anti-tank guns that we owed before, we can already form an armored division in our hands. It just so happened that a new division that we had been ordered to recruit was being trained on the outskirts, and there was no problem with loyalty, so why don't we form a unit of our own. The old man looked at the henchmen around him and spoke.

......

"Boom!" the German artillery bombardment in the direction of Moscow had no intention of stopping, and a shell burst into fire on the Soviet positions, kicking up black smoke that covered the sky. On Moscow's forward line, riddled with bomb craters, a Soviet officer squinted his eyes and slapped his hand twice on a steel helmet covered with sand above his head.

Under the cover of assault guns, the black German soldiers slowly approached the Soviets' positions, and they arranged machine gun cover in nearby craters, carefully stepping past the corpses of the Soviet Red Army and the Wehrmacht, and advancing non-stop towards a high ground that had been almost flattened by shells.

"Lower your body! Spread out as much as possible! After entering the trenches, immediately clear the threat, non-stop movement is the basic means of saving your life, tension is your worst enemy!" Behind the smoke bombs, the German officers were repeatedly reminding their newly recruited subordinates that these soldiers were from Belgium and France, and they were considered German foreign legions.

These soldiers were recruited by the SS and did not crowd out the regular Wehrmacht recruitment, but they could compensate for many of the Wehrmacht's shortcomings in recruitment. Because it was not affiliated with the German Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, the SS had more options when it came to recruitment.

After agitation and lobbying, the SS recruited qualified recruits in the French occupation zone, as well as in Belgium and the Netherlands in Luxembourg. The farthest conscription detachment found 1,000 volunteers in Spain. These soldiers, all of whom hated the Soviet Union and were willing to fight for a strong and united Greater Europe, took rudimentary weapons, and thus went to the battlefield under the name of a "free SS division".

Countless soldiers, under the cover of German tanks, entered the effective range of the Soviet army, and soon some of the Soviet heavy machine guns in ambush began to roar, some poorly hidden German soldiers began to be hit, and the sound of shouting medical guards sounded everywhere. These German SS soldiers jumped into the dilapidated trenches and began to fight the Soviet soldiers pouring out from all directions, fighting for this not wide position.

The Soviet officer, who had been slapping his steel helmet just now, was now frowning at his left flank position, where the German shouts were already everywhere, and he had seen the German swastika swaying back and forth at the highest point of the position. His face turned pale because he knew that the high ground he was guarding was only 13,400 meters away from Moscow.

Yes, the unit is meters! He couldn't take a step back, because he knew that if he retreated here, then the Germans would be closer to Moscow. He touched an empty French cigarette case in his arms, his lips bloodless from being pressed together with excessive force.

He once smoked a cigarette with Zaitsev, the captain of the personal guard of the great Soviet leader Comrade Stalin, and he saw the admiring eyes of the other party. So he decided to die this time, because that was his belief as a Soviet soldier. So he turned a blind eye to his crumbling left flank and ordered his troops to continue to hold on to their positions that were leaky on all sides.

"Let Comrade Pugadov bring a machine gun and find a way to hold the flank of the left flank, with Moscow behind us, and we can't retreat! Everyone must be conscious of being Soviet soldiers, and they must shed their last drop of blood for Comrade Stalin!" he loudly gave the battle order to continue to hold on, and as he spoke, the German troops in front of him had already poured into his first-line outer trenches under the cover of assault guns.

About 5 kilometers behind the Soviet officer, in a secret underground bunker, Zhukov and Vatutin, now the supreme commander of the Soviet army, were inspecting their defensive positions. The sound of artillery in the distance was dense and inaudible, but the two of them still got some not very good news from the commander of the front army who accompanied them.

"Comrade Marshal Zhukov, Comrade General Vatutin, our troops lacked heavy anti-tank weapons, and the soldiers paid with countless precious lives to deal with the tanks of the Germans. The general reluctantly recounted the heavy losses his troops had suffered over the past few days: "In three days I was replenished with 1,400 soldiers, but my troops lost 3,900 men. ”

Vatutin, because he had nothing to support the generals at the front, had to complain along with him. In fact, he also has his own difficulties, and the industrial base in the rear is increasingly taking Moscow seriously: "Heavy weapons from Chelyabinsk were interrupted two weeks ago, and weapons and equipment from other places were intercepted by the rear under various pretexts......"

"Comrade Vatutin. Zhukov looked at the map, finally pointed to the defensive line in front of the position, which had been broken by the German troops, and said to his colleagues: "You should let the troops withdraw from here, they can only die in vain there." ”

Vatutin smiled bitterly, then walked to the front of the map, looked away from the sign that marked the distance of 13 kilometers, and then said to Zhukov: "Comrade Marshal, you don't know that we have no room to retreat. Comrade Stalin had already given the death order 20 days ago, and all troops were not allowed to take a step back. ”

As soon as Zhukov entered the room, the first thing he looked at was the statistical report of the troops' supply acceptance, and he knew that these troops, which seemed to have great potential in numbers, were actually just empty shelves one after another. They don't have enough ammunition, and many times they don't get supplies in time, and being able to hold on to this moment is already the result of the sacrifice of the grassroots soldiers for the country.

So he looked at Vatutin, pointed to the defensive positions that had been covered by German artillery fire, and asked: "Look at it! Look there! The people who are guarding there are soldiers who really love this country! They are fighting with their lives against the steel of the Germans! What do you ask them to use to hold their positions? Throw stones at the King Tiger tank?"