Chapter 205 |
< World War II - River of Fire and Blood (1) >
July 25, 1941
Near Murmansk, Kola Peninsula, Northwestern Soviet Union
The Soviet Army was struggling desperately to defend Murmansk, their ice-free port and northern territory.
However, the Allied Forces' offensive to drive the Soviet Army from the Kola Peninsula showed no signs of stopping.
A gunshot rang out.
"C-Comrade!"
The Soviet squad leader collapsed unceremoniously, blood spurting from his head.
"D-Damn it! Which bastard did that?!"
The squad leader had been reasonably well-liked, and upon his death, his squad members charged furiously toward the source of the gunshot, but they found nothing.
"Damn fucking sniper. He's already long gone."
"Fuck, fuck, fucking… He was a good comrade."
The squad members were crestfallen, but their tragedy did not end there.
A man they had failed to spot threw off a camouflage sheet, rose to his feet right in their midst, and aimed a submachine gun.
It was the Finnish KP/-31 Suomi submachine gun, a weapon that every Soviet soldier dreaded.
"G-"
The word "Get down" was never finished.
The man mercilessly, yet precisely, raked the entire squad with his submachine gun.
It took less than three seconds for all the squad members to fall to the ground.
An entire Soviet squad had been annihilated in an instant.
The man who had wiped them out, the White Death, Simo Häyhä, changed the magazine of his Suomi with an impassive face.
After General Winter, who had protected Finland on the Kola Peninsula, had briefly retreated before the summer, his uniform was no longer white camouflage, contrary to his nickname.
After changing the magazine, Häyhä checked each of the Soviet squad members one by one to ensure they were dead.
He acted without emotion, purely mechanically, when he suddenly recalled a question from his direct superior, Arne Juutilainen, and his answer.
-You're truly incredible. How do you shoot so accurately?
-I practiced.
"Ugh, ugh… Mama, mama…"
One soldier had luckily, or rather unluckily, survived and was groaning in agony as he bled.
Simo Häyhä drew his pistol and aimed it at the soldier's temple.
"N-No, p-please, save-"
He remembered a question a comrade had once asked him.
-Don't you feel anything, killing so many?
-I am only carrying out my orders.
He pulled the trigger. With the gunshot, a slight recoil nudged his wrist.
The soldier made no more sounds.
After confirming that all hands were dead, Häyhä slung his Suomi and picked up his M28 sniper rifle again.
His orders were clear, and for every Soviet soldier he killed, his fatherland's sacrifices would be reduced.
If he had time to mourn the dead, he would rather use it to protect those who would die by their hands.
That was all that mattered to him.
Häyhä silently moved on.
---
"Waaaaah!"
"Vive la France!"
The French Army, its morale soaring from a series of victories, advanced with the Tricolore held high.
"Drive the Soviets from the Kola Peninsula!"
"Finland will never forget! For Kallio!"
Alongside them, the Finnish Army, holding the flag of Finland, also advanced without rest.
The rugged Murmanskaya Mountains had already been breached.
The Soviets had attacked Finland in the winter and spring, but the French and Finnish counterattack was happening in the summer.
With General Winter, the greatest barrier protecting the Kola Peninsula, asleep, the Soviet Army was collapsing rapidly.
And flying above their heads, Bf109 fighters bearing the Finnish flag insignia provided cover.
-Hey, Katayainen. Try not to lose this fighter.
-Come on, what am I supposed to do if the engine cuts out!
-Heh heh, if only that guy's skill was half as good as his luck.
The Soviet Air Force, already stretched thin on the main fronts in Belarus and Ukraine, had been wiped out on the Kola Peninsula.
The Allied pilots were so relaxed that they leisurely flew around, carrying out ground support missions whenever they spotted Soviet troops.
The Soviet troops redeployed from the Far East to Finland were indeed elite, and they had managed to hold their defense under Stalin's command to defend the Kola Peninsula.
But there was a limit to how long the Soviet forces, already cut off from the mainland and continuously suffering attrition in Finland, could hold out.
Inferior to the Allied Forces in morale, justification, air superiority, and supplies, the Soviet Army finally collapsed in vain.
Just as the entire force was on the verge of annihilation, Stalin accepted Zhukov's demand and decided on a withdrawal from Murmansk.
The French commander, Charles de Gaulle, was crossing the Murmanskaya Mountains in a command vehicle with his Chief of Staff, Alphonse Juin.
"Indeed, that German general's know-how has been a great help to us."
General Karl Eglseer always insisted on being called an Austrian general, but unfortunately, almost no Allied soldier on the Kola Peninsula called him that.
Juin nodded in agreement with de Gaulle's words.
"That minister of theirs wasn't lying when he said he would be helpful in severe cold and mountain warfare."
Dietrich had assigned General Eglseer to the French Army, and he had fulfilled his role perfectly.
He had brought a great deal of equipment from the Austrian Mountain Troops stationed in the Alps, calling it the pride of his fatherland, and it had been a great help to the French in breaking through the Murmanskaya Mountains.
De Gaulle briefly recalled his meeting with Dietrich Schacht.
The man had said he desired nothing from them.
He only said that our actions would represent France, and that they would determine how the Allied Forces would come to see France.
And de Gaulle and the French Army had defended Finland and annihilated the Soviet forces on the Kola Peninsula.
He had proven the French Army's ability for all to see, but at the same time, he couldn't help but wonder if this had been that minister's intention all along.
But even if it was, he felt no displeasure.
In the end, this was for his fatherland.
It was something to be proud of.
Finally, as their command vehicle crested a hill, the natural port city of Murmansk came into view.
"Oh, oh…"
Juin couldn't help but marvel at the sight of the proud French Tricolore and the Finnish flag flying over the city and naval port, which had been emptied as the Soviet forces evacuated by sea.
"Vive la France!"
"Finland is victorious!"
"Long live the Allied Forces!"
The area was filled with soldiers, so overjoyed that they probably didn't even know what the others were saying, hugging each other and waving each other's flags.
De Gaulle watched the soldiers for a moment, then gazed past Murmansk toward the wide horizon stretching out to the Barents Sea.
"…The sea at the end of the world."
The sea that Alexander the Great had sung of and pursued was spread out before their eyes.
De Gaulle quietly took out the handkerchief Yvonne had given him before he left France and pressed it to his lips.
---
July 28, 1941
Dnepropetrovsk, Southwestern Soviet Union (Central Ukraine)
The Dnieper River, a river that began in Smolensk, cut across the territories of Belarus and Ukraine, and flowed into the Black Sea.
The only remaining Soviet strongpoint on the West Bank of the Dnieper was now Dnepropetrovsk.
And it was under a ferocious assault by the Allied Forces.
The roar of 15cm heavy artillery shook the very earth, and the shelling from the massive guns began to tear apart the defense line, threatening to pulverize the city itself.
"Go, Go, Go!"
Immediately after, a wave of German soldiers surged forward, led by Panzer IVs, followed closely by armored vehicles and infantry, pressing their offensive without pause.
"Freedom to Ukraine!"
"Drive out the Soviet oppressors!"
And behind them, the Ukrainian Army, holding the flag of Free Ukraine, charged forward, covering the horizon.
As if that horrifying scene wasn't enough to make one's head spin, the Soviets' tragedy did not end there.
"Arsonists! Scatter!"
As the Soviet soldiers scattered in a panic, a rain of bombs dropped by HeB 177 and Ju88 bombers poured down on their heads.
"Aaargh!"
The flames that erupted from the bombs exploding above them mercilessly swallowed and incinerated people, spreading from building to building and engulfing the entire city in a conflagration.
With the locals having long since turned to the Free Ukrainian Army or evacuated to Soviet territory, the incendiary bombing of Dnepropetrovsk continued unabated.
There might still be civilians left, but once the battle began with the city fortified as the Soviet Army's final strongpoint on the West Bank of the Dnieper, the issue of international law that Minister Schacht had harped on disappeared, and the German Army no longer held back.
-Hahaha, burn, burn brightly!
As the maniacal laughter of Wolfram von Richthofen, who, despite being the Chief of the Air Force General Staff, had ended up piloting an HeB 177 himself, erupted from the radio, Adolf Galland shook his head.
"Good grief, that old man…"
The munitions factories, which had been in the middle of being dismantled for relocation to the Ural Mountains just before the German Army advanced this far, were forced to halt their work as the bombing began.
The military-industrial facilities that the Soviet Union had tried so hard to protect by building a mountain of countless corpses were now going up in flames in vain against the German Army's advance, which broke through at a speed beyond imagination.
The steel cavalry, Germany's tanks, entered the hellish, burning cityscape.
"The enemy's momentum is already broken! Do not stop, charge! We will be the first to plant our flag!"
-Yes, sir!
Erwin Rommel relentlessly drove his subordinates forward, and his armored unit, crushing the desperate Soviet resistance, began its charge to enter the urban area.
"We are the first and the best panzer division! While Rommel was out for a stroll in Britain, we fought in Poland, Italy, and the Soviet Union! Charge, gentlemen! Armor is a branch for attacking!"
-The father of the Panzer leads us!
Not to be outdone, Heinz Guderian spurred his unit on, leading the offensive.
Artillery and air support, the core tanks, and the armored vehicles, trucks, and infantry that supported them.
Faced with this perfectly equipped armored wave, the Soviet defense line began to collapse rapidly.
"Charge, for the Motherland!"
-Soviet Ura!
The Soviet T-34 tanks, struggling to somehow circle around to attack the German flank and halt their advance, were invariably blocked by the units of Hans-Valentin Hube and Walter Model.
"Agh, don't those guys ever get tired of this! Fire, fire! Hit them with Schacht's Gun!"
"Feuer!"
Under the command of Clemens Fleck, a barrage from the 88mm anti-aircraft guns, already nicknamed Schacht's Gun, and the Pak 40 anti-tank guns rained down, and the T-34s began to explode as futilely as paper-thin light tanks.
If they managed to advance through that concentrated fire, the new model Panzer IVs would be waiting to begin a one-sided hunt.
The T-34s that somehow managed to engage in a fierce exchange even in such a desperate war situation were turned into burning coffins by infantry who had been hiding behind Panzer IVs or armored vehicles and fired Panzerfausts.
The losses of the Soviet Army, which had lost a large number of its veteran soldiers in Poland, were snowballing.
In the battles that had continued since being driven out of Poland, the Soviet Union had already suffered massive losses of 1.
4 million in Ukraine and Belarus, while the Allied Forces had suffered a mere 250,000 casualties.
By the time the entire Kleist Panzer Group descended upon Dnepropetrovsk, the Soviet's final strongpoint on the West Bank of the Dnieper, the defeat of this battle was already certain.
There was no one who did not know this.
Not even the Soviet commander, Lieutenant General Mikhail Yefremov, who was directing the desperate resistance in the burning city of Dnepropetrovsk.
"The defense line has collapsed, Comrade General. …This is as far as I go."
Yefremov spoke softly, thankful that the telephone line had not been completely severed.
From the other end, the voice of Georgy Zhukov could be heard.
-You have done well, Comrade Lieutenant General.
Why don't you escape now? Just cross the river. Even the General Secretary would not pur…
Zhukov's next words were drowned out by the deafening roar of an explosion that shook the earth.
The incandescent lightbulb in Lieutenant General Yefremov's command room swayed and danced precariously.
Outside, gunshots and screams rained down, and curses were being hurled without pause.
Yefremov stared at the dancing lightbulb with blurred eyes before speaking.
"Comrade General, I have subordinates who are fighting and bleeding at this very moment, believing only in the Union and my orders.
With what face could I abandon them and flee to save my own skin?"
-…Your name, Comrade Lieutenant General, may be forgotten, but your actions will be immortal.
A roar echoed, and once again the lightbulb swayed precariously and flickered.
A gunshot rang out.
A scream rang out.
Yefremov remained silent for a moment before speaking.
"We die for the fatherland, Comrade General.
Is our resistance, are our deaths, of any value?"
A death for the Soviet Union. What value was there in this war?
After a brief silence, Zhukov's voice came through.
-With your resistance, Comrade, the Union has bought time to evacuate the industrial facilities on the Right Bank of the Dnieper and establish a defense line. It was made possible by your noble sacrifice.
Lieutenant General Yefremov had not been asking about the strategic value their sacrifice had bought.
Georgy Zhukov must have known that.
"…Victory to the Union, Comrade General. Soviet Ura."
-…Soviet Ura.
Another explosion roared.
The precariously dancing lightbulb went out, and the phone line went dead.
Yefremov quietly set down the receiver.
"May our sacrifices have truly been worth something."
And then he drew his pistol and brought it to his head.
A gunshot rang out, and the lieutenant general's body collapsed.
The lieutenant general's corpse was not found by the German Army until the next morning.
"General. Over here."
General Walter Model, guided by his subordinate, looked at Lieutenant General Yefremov's corpse for a moment, then saluted him.
"…Bury him with honors. Let any of their prisoners who wish to attend do so."
"Understood, General! Uh, his valuables are still here, what should we do with them?"
Model glanced at the expensive-looking gold watch on the lieutenant general's wrist and answered simply.
"Don't touch it. Bury him as he is."
"Understood!"
Walter Model stepped out of the enemy commander's command room and looked at the wide Dnieper River flowing before the city, then raised the binoculars around his neck to survey the other side of the battlefield.
The Soviet Union had been soundly defeated on the West Bank of the Dnieper, following their defeat in Poland, but they had nonetheless bought time with their blood to regroup on the East Bank of the Dnieper.
From the beginning of Operation Liberation until now, the German Army had suffered just under 300,000 losses.
Considering the casualty ratio alone, it could be called an overwhelming victory.
But who could dare say that the deaths of hundreds of thousands was a small sacrifice?
To achieve the complete liberation of Ukraine, they would eventually have to break through the Dnieper River.
The current military force was 2.3 million Germans, 1.
5 million Poles, and 500,000 Ukrainians. Facing them were at least 6 million Soviet troops.
Model turned his back, worrying how much more blood that river would drink.