Chapter 377: Onslaught
As the winter snow melts, warmth and sunshine return, and everything recovers, what should have been a season of life, but war has scorched most of the world.
In June, the German Nazis unilaterally tore up the Soviet-German non-aggression pact and officially began the Barbarossa war plan.
For this plan, the Germans mobilized 190 divisions, 3 million men, more than 3,700 tanks, more than 1,800 aircraft, and nearly 50,000 artillery pieces and mortars, divided into three army groups, to simultaneously launch a fierce attack on the Soviet troops on the Baltic to Caspian front.
When it comes to the German army, the best thing is of course blitzkrieg, and when they first launched their attack, bombers overwhelmingly destroyed important Soviet targets such as urban rail communications, communication hubs, and naval bases.
After that, it broke through with the tank corps as the main force and quickly launched an offensive into the depth of the Soviet defense.
In addition, its army group of the Northern Front also captured Leningrad along the Baltic coast; The Central Front Army Group followed Minsks and Molenk and captured Moscow; The Southern Front captured Kyiv, Kharkov and Donbass, and Nazi Germany attempted to end the war in a month and a half to two months and completely crush the polar bears.
At the beginning of the war, the Soviet side was unprepared for the treacherous and sudden attack of Nazi Germany and was taken by surprise.
In fact, on the eve of the German invasion, a German deserter reported the fact that the German army was approaching, but it did not attract the attention of the high command, so that the Nazis were defeated one after another, allowing the Nazis to easily break through their defense line and gain absolute air supremacy and initiative.
Thousands of artillery pieces erupted at the same time with terrifying artillery fire, a continuous stream of bombers crossed the border like lightning, the blue tongue of smoke from the tank exhaust pipes filled the air with a pungent smell, the light blue of the gunpowder smoke mixed with the damp green of the grass and the golden reflection of the cornfields, the sky was the Stuka bombers whistling by, and the tank troops below were like a hot sharp knife piercing the Soviet hinterland.
On the first day of the invasion alone, the German air force destroyed at least eighteen hundred Soviet aircraft, more than half of which were destroyed on the ground.
The armored vanguard, covered by the air force, broke through all the lines, thousands of Soviet soldiers became prisoners, and more than a dozen Soviet divisions were scattered or repulsed.
The Soviet telephone and telegraph lines were also destroyed, which led to a confusion in the command of the Supreme Command, so much so that the German offensive began for four hours, and the Soviet side did not issue any orders for a counteroffensive.
But even if Nazi Germany had great success at the beginning of the war, the northern part of the country, which covered more than one-sixth of the world's land area and about 200 million people, and whose climate and topographical conditions were so different from those of Germany, that the blitzkrieg expected by Hitler and most of the High Command would not have been completed as promised.
At the same time, the Soviets, who had finally reacted, began to mobilize their troops with all their might, massing their forces to the west, appointing Zhukov as chief of staff of the Supreme Command, and quickly drawing up a comprehensive defense plan.
Zhukov's plan was not to deploy a large number of defensive forces near the border, but to establish three continuous defensive lines at a depth of more than 150 miles, which he hoped would contain the German armored forces, so that the echelons and reserves in the rear could organize an effective counterattack.
Berlin, Germany.
"Well done! This is the combat effectiveness that our imperial warriors should show~! β
Hitler was so excited by the amazing results of the first day that he even wrote a letter to Mossolini saying that he was finally free mentally and free from the pain of the Soviet-German alliance.
"Come on, I'm leaving for our new headquarters!"
"Yes! Monarch! β
The excited Hitler spoke of the new headquarters, which he called the "Wolf's Lair" near Rustburg in East Prussia.
There was a dense forest there, and Hitler had many wooden barracks and concrete houses built deep into the forest.
To the east of the "Wolf's Lair" was Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Loeb, who was marching towards Leningrad,
And the left-wing XVIII Army was also marching along the Baltic coast into the Latvian Shousuke and the seaport of Riga.
The right-flank Sixteenth Army protected his flank by maintaining contact with the central cluster.
The 56th Panzer Army, the most important of all, advanced fifty miles on the day of the invasion and occupied the road and railway viaduct across the continental Pisa Gorge near the village of Anrogra, the gateway to the heart of the Baltic Sea.
At the forward camp of the 2nd Tank Battalion of the Motorized Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Panzer Army Group South of Nazi Germany, a soldier was holding a walkie-talkie while listening to the announcement of the FΓΌhrer's speech read by a staff officer.
[Now, this greatest frontier in the history of eternity has begun to move forward, not to provide the means to end this great war forever, or to defend those who are currently at war, but to save our civilization throughout Europe!] German soldiers, you are now entering a serious and demanding battle, because the fate of Europe, the future of the German Empire, and the survival of our nation fall on your shoulders! May God bless us all in this struggle. γ
Listening to the crackling content on the walkie-talkie, a soldier laughed out loud and said, "Isn't it tiring to write so much?" Anyway, let's attack new enemies. β
"Shh~~ Be quiet, don't be heard by the battalion commander."
Another soldier hurriedly reminded him.
"Afraid of what? Lusaku, the battalion commander won't come to us, he must be around the regiment commander and pat the sycophants above, right? β
The soldier named Lusaku nodded and muttered in a low voice: "Also, the battle ahead has been smooth and smooth, we have encountered almost no obstacles along the way, and the battalion commander seems to have been by the regiment commander's side all the time, but Pete, looking at this way, maybe this battle will really end in a month or two, where do you want to go when the war is over?" β
The soldier from before held his hands behind his head, with a straw in his mouth, thought for a moment and said, "Where to go?" Homecoming, of course. β
"Go home......" Lusaku chewed on these two words, his expression a little distracted, and then whispered, "Go home...... What a luxury, even if we defeat the Soviets, there are still endless battles to be fought on the side of the British and the federal government, and it is too much luxury for us to go home. β
Speaking of this, Soldier Pete seemed to remember something: "Speaking of going home, I can't help but think of your mother's toast, when we were children, we used to steal some bread to eat, and I remember once my mouth was blistered." β
"Hehe~ Isn't it, I was caught by my mother and beat you together, but the bread stuffed into my mouth can't be spit out of anything~"
Both of them laughed as they recalled their childhood.
"By the way, Lusaku, your brother Luel should have grown up too? He didn't join the army? β
"No, he's still young, it's enough for me to join the army, after all, we've been doing well so far, haven't we?"
Thinking of his brother, Lusaku's face showed a hint of doting.
Suddenly, at this moment, there was a sudden explosion in front of them, and it seemed that their vanguard had exchanged fire with the Soviet troops.