On the long front of the USSR with Poland, an unknown small village. Once a trading post on the border between Poland and the Soviet Union, it is now an important stronghold for both sides.

The Soviet troops stormed the Polish defenders here for 15 days, but failed to fully capture the small village, which consisted of only two dozen houses. It wasn't until the Soviets used artillery to reduce the village to rubble that the Polish soldiers stationed there retreated to the permanent fortifications behind.

And on top of the rubble of this village, an infantry unit of the Soviet Red Army was struggling to cross the Soviet-Polish border, and about two kilometers further on, the main defense of the Polish border, where the Soviet troops in front had already left thousands of corpses, and still could not move forward.

"Comrade commissar!" an officer of the Soviet Red Army saluted to a commissar: "We have run out of ammunition and cannot launch an offensive now......"

"Retreat is not allowed!" the commissar glanced at the officer who had come up to complain, and said arrogantly: "Every soldier should fall on the road of advance for the sake of the motherland!"

"Comrade Commissar! We haven't eaten all morning! The soldier was so tired that he fell asleep in the snow. We are short of ammunition and are fighting on enemy soil......" the officer said with a sad face, "We need rest, food, ammunition and fuel." ”

"No! you can't stop. The commissar stubbornly shook his head and pointed in the direction of the Polish line: "The real Bolsheviks will not be defeated by hunger and fear!"

Anyone with a modicum of military knowledge knows that a hungry army should not be forced to attack, not to mention that the hungry army lacks ammunition and other supplies. However, it is clear that this comrade political commissar of the Soviet Red Army was stupid at reading Stalin's manual of admonitions, and he preferred to believe that the yellow-faced and thin-skinned Red Army soldiers in the distance could transcend the physical body with their spirits.

The offensive began in the afternoon, the Soviet Red Army organized a large-scale assault on the front of the village, throwing a full 4,000 soldiers into the Polish line, only to be hit back by the machine guns on the Polish line, many soldiers were executed by the law enforcement team, and many more fell on the way to the charge, except for the Poles to use up some reserve ammunition, the attack achieved nothing.

Several of the political commissars who organized the attack began to shirk their responsibilities, attributing the failure of the offensive to the unwillingness of the officers to serve the Motherland or the failure of the soldiers to carry out the sacred tasks entrusted to them by the Motherland - in short, it had nothing to do with them. At the end of their meeting, they came to the conclusion that there were still some bourgeois conspirators lurking in the army to sabotage the Red Army's combat operations.

As a result, several officers who had complained in the morning that the troops lacked ammunition and supplies were arrested and sent to the distant Siberian concentration camps. The officer, who said that his army had nothing to eat, was shot in front of everyone. Sometimes we don't understand the fact that if a few people die, we can give an account to the thousands of people who died before.

Kliment Yevremovich Voroshilov, as Marshal of the Soviet Union, was now anxiously watching his subordinates stand in a dejected row waiting for his lecture. He had just arrived at the front this month to take command of the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Red Army, which was close to collapse. His predecessor had already been sent to a concentration camp in Siberia a few hours after his arrival.

As a result, after he took over the command of the front, the Soviet Red Army still failed to win the battle against Poland, except for the mobilization of elite troops to attack part of the center of Poland, the Soviet Red Army remained in place near the Polish border for most of the front. Even the breakthrough in the central line of defense was achieved only after the Soviet Red Army was in confusion for several days, and then slowly advanced.

However, Marshal Voroshilov was fortunate to be more fortunate than his predecessor in that, in order to show the importance he attached to the attack at the front, Stalin sent three of his confidants to take charge of all matters on the Polish side. Both Khrushchev and Yezhov were now at Voroshilov's side, in charge of the political work of the offensive forces of the Soviet Red Army.

However, Khrushchev and Yezhov were both born in politics. They didn't know anything about military affairs, but they all wanted to point fingers and show their strategic vision, and their intervention made the Soviet army's offensive weak.

First of all, Yezhov insisted that the Soviet Red Army continue to insist on the offensive on all fronts, but as a result, the Soviet troops dispersed the advantage of heavy weapons, fought for a week in a row, and failed to move forward, and the regimental commander was killed by a third, and a third was arrested and executed, and the situation was still not opened.

Khrushchev, seeing Yezhov's jokes, decided to change this tactic. He was more self-aware than Yezhov, and consulted some Red Army commanders, and finally came up with an offensive plan for a central breakthrough and a direct attack on Warsaw. Of course, in the end, due to the lack of middle and lower-level officers, the process of gathering troops was chaotic, and the Soviet Red Army itself was in chaos.

In the end, Voroshilov took over the command that should have belonged to him a long time ago, but he was faced with a mess that could not be worse. Of course, his luck was not because of this, but because Khrushchev and Yezhov decided to hide their mistakes on the front, so Stalin in Moscow received the news of the victory of the Soviet Red Army, and Voroshilov was given more time to fight for the victory that the Soviet Red Army should have won a long time ago.

The Polish troops relied on strong fortifications to inflict tens of thousands of casualties on the Soviet Red Army, and although the entire line of defense was now crumbling due to the lack of reserves, it was absolutely no problem to hold out for another ten days and half a month.

The Polish defenders found that the Soviet troops were simply testing their training according to their defense manuals: the clumsy attacks of the Soviet soldiers cost casualties when they were stationed in the villages, and the retreating Soviets came up to their deaths when they retreated back to the reinforced concrete fortifications.

To put it bluntly, the Soviets were simply fighting this war with the rhythm of the Polish defenders: when the Poles were afraid to retreat, the Soviets blindly attacked and were beaten back to their hometowns, giving Poland the courage to resist; when the Poles were weak and helpless, the Soviets were confused and wasted the opportunity to give the Poles a chance to breathe; and when the Poles were ready to fight, the Soviets washed their faces again......

Khrushchev looked at the casualty figures of his troops and felt that sweat was already forming on his forehead. He signed his name to the battle report to Stalin, and the land captured in the void victory was still trampled under the feet of the Poles. Every day of this kind of thing is a mental torment.

And sitting across from him, Yezhov, who had been antagonistic for favor, also looked depressed, and he also signed the report of the victory at the front, so now he could fully understand Khrushchev's mood. They were now grasshoppers on a rope, so he was in a terrible mood in the face of another failure.

Voroshilov was the only one of the three who knew about the war, and he knew that there would be such a fiasco before he got this document. His army's logistical supplies are now in a mess, with mountains of supplies piling up in Kyiv and Minsk, but very little to be transported to the front. The Germans helped build a large number of railways, but because of the disparity in the level of dispatch, these railways could not even use half of their capacity during the war.

The soldiers on the front line are short of food and clothing, and ammunition cannot meet the needs of large-scale battles, and if they can still win in this way, it can be said that God blesses. So Voroshilov from the very beginning did not believe that this offensive would achieve the desired victory. However, he had to send his soldiers to their deaths in exchange for the support and compromise of two of Stalin's cronies.

"Why did this attack fail again? Marshal Voroshilov!" asked Yezhov, as if trying to find a reason to shift the blame for this failure.

Khrushchev sighed: "The army is now in disarray, and many political commissars have reported to me that there is no way to urge the army to advance! At least we have to send food and ammunition before we can continue the offensive!"

"What if...... If Comrade Stalin had known, we would have dared to deceive him. Voroshilov coughed twice: "All three of us are finished...... We now have to think of a way to get the best of both worlds and cover up our lies!"

Seeing that he was not able to shirk his responsibility, Yezhov shook his head and said: "Launch another attack? Every time we fail, there will be one more hole! Now this hole is almost bigger than the sky!"

"Comrade Stalin held a meeting in Moscow the other day and praised all three of us by name. Khrushchev sighed and said about the honor he had received, he had never been so afraid of the praise of his superiors as he is now: "The medals awarded to us are also being prepared to hold symposiums in the major military districts to discuss this victory." ”

"It is impossible to attack! The army has reached its limit, and maintaining it without chaos is already the result of the efforts of various departments. Voroshilov thought for a moment and said: "It will take two months at the earliest, and the attack will be carried out smoothly at the beginning of January next year! ”

Seeing that he put all the blame on the dead, Khrushchev and Yezhov nodded their heads. But then the two men became sad again: since the army could not get the victory it wanted, how could this victory that had been boasted of become real?