Nine Hundred and Forty Six Alive

"Don't move! Yes! Don't move!" For Rokossovsky, what annoyed him the most was not carrying a shame on his back, but facing the seemingly endless number of reporters in front of him, who came from Germany Journalists in Italy, Romania, France, Britain, etc.

"General Kuchler, with all due respect, if you are willing to put all these journalists in the army earlier, you can at least double the size of your army." Rokossovsky took the trouble to put a poker face Aiming at countless lenses, let the flash crackle and flicker.

In order to deal with these reporters coming from afar, Küchler had to leave his original headquarters on the second day of the surrender, and transferred the headquarters of the entire group army to the headquarters of Rokossovsky when he surrendered. Then the two of them were like pets, let the people from the Imperial Propaganda Department play with them.

Even the Germans didn't know where to find a Soviet flag full of holes and burn marks, so that Rokossovsky performed the scene of handing over the flag and bowing over and over again.

"General Rokossovsky... You must know that the capture of Stalingrad will have a major impact on the foreign policy of Germany as a whole. Therefore, the domestic reporters and the high-level military officials in the south seem a little too excited After saying that, Küchler smiled at the camera ⊕∷, and took over the shabby military flag from Rokossovsky for the tenth time.

What the capture of Stalingrad means, both the Soviet and German high-level leaders can see very clearly. As an important node of the German army's southern offensive, the capture of Stalingrad has finally filled the broken and incomplete Volga River defense line. Now Küchler seems to have nothing else to do besides deploying some troops to reinforce the defense line along the river. up.

After completing the frontal defense along the wide Volga River, the rear of the German heavy armored forces finally had a relatively safe environment temporarily. At least until Stalingrad was re-occupied by the Soviet Union, these German troops only needed to focus on dealing with the enemy in front of them. That's it.

The G Group Army going north will immediately receive reinforcements of about 5 divisions, which will undoubtedly be great news for the exhausted Guderian. At least the goal of his troops going north has been achieved, and the only thing left is to consume each other with Zhukov.

The most important issue is that the German army has solved the last hidden danger of the m group army going south. At least General Manstein captured the strategic goal of the Baku oil field. Now the German army has completed more than half of it. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in the Baku area were surrounded in a vast Soviet enclave and lost contact with Moscow. As for how long these troops can last, just ask General Manstein's Tanks and cannons too.

"Needless to say, you and I both know what losing the Baku oil field means to the Soviet Union, but you should also know that it is impossible for the German army to occupy Baku intact." Rokosovs Ji moved his stiff shoulders, cherishing the rest time he had waited so hard for.

The reporters and officials of the German Propaganda Department asked almost countless questions to test Rokossovsky's self-esteem, including his views on Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union and so on. Anyway, the screws on these propaganda machines are going to squeeze all the news from Rokossovsky before he is reused by the head of state.

As if to unify their caliber, all the reporters turned a blind eye to the civilians who buried their bodies outside this underground headquarters. They seemed to have no interest in those poor women and children who were anxiously waiting for the German water truck with buckets.

The Germans can no longer be the enemy of the city here. After simple disinfection, one after another water tanker trucks drove into the ruined city. Under the guard of Ukrainian soldiers carrying weapons, the locals finally drank To the "drinking water" which is slightly better than the river water.

"Don't grab! Line up!" A middle-aged man wearing a German flag armband was wearing a black jacket, trying to maintain order at the scene. These people were originally managers elected by the Germans to maintain law and order in the occupied areas. They were originally "traitors" and "renegades" in the mouth of the local residents. But now time has proved their choice, and they have become the rare "decent people" among the aborigines in this city.

In addition to the local poor who are struggling for their own lives, there are more than 50,000 captives who are enjoying their working life in the concentration camp in advance. These people were guarded by the German army and were cleaning up the rubble. It is precisely because of the efforts of these people that some streets were quickly restored to traffic status.

Another reason for them to clean up the ruins is because there are countless deadly landmines buried in these ruins, most of which are booby-trapped mines temporarily laid by infantry, and there is no way to identify the marks on the map. Therefore, the German army cruelly used prisoners to restore the city, and carried out dangerous "mining" work for them in disguise.

Corpses that had been changed beyond recognition were silently carried out of the ruins by the civilians. Many people starved to death within a few hours before the resistance stopped. The hideouts where Soviet soldiers committed suicide abound, and when the door is opened from the outside, there is a disgusting smell of spoilage.

Local civilians wearing masks or handkerchiefs walked into these rooms full of corpses without saying a word, and then dragged out the corpses that committed suicide with guns or other weapons. The walls were splashed with dark red liquid, and after drying up, everything here was sealed in that eternal moment.

From time to time there were crying voices, low and faint, at least in front of German soldiers, few people wailed blatantly. After all, after working for a day, there is food as a reward, and no one will make life difficult for the dead and the stomachs of their own family.

On some slightly tidy streets, there are already naughty children running and laughing. Not far from where they play, there is a huge pit half filled with corpses. In a few months, these children began to be familiar with the "things" like corpses. They were not afraid of blood, nor were they afraid of gunshots. They even looked curiously at the passing German patrols with bright eyes. Looking at these victors who came from afar.

The older and more sensible children began to sit on the side of the road and shine shoes for the German army. These children are very experienced shoe shiners. After all, in the most difficult years, they relied on this craft to make German chocolate and potatoes Flour was brought home, which was more timely than the relief food provided by the Soviets.

A city that was already dead began to glow with vitality the moment the battle just ended. Although life seems so fragile and small here, it is also proving to everyone its stubbornness and tenacity. People seem to have crawled back from the gap in hell. Although this place has become dilapidated, it has returned to the world in an instant.

"One bag! Yes! Just one bag of potato flour!" Among the ruins, a German soldier with a gun on his back was doing some business with two old local residents. He stretched out his hand and gestured for the quantity. Followed by doing some muddle-headed translation work.

The two old civilians finally took out the jewelry in their pockets, the glittering gold seemed to be worth a lot of money. However, in this place tempered by artillery fire, all valuable things are nothing more than food and life. A priceless artwork here is worth at most a few bags of moldy potato flour.

"These Germans don't seem to be as scary as imagined. They exchange what they have in their hands for valuables, politely greet the old people who pass by, take care of the children's business, and give candies and chocolates to those shoe shiners. A Soviet officer who was responsible for counting the prisoners with the German army sighed to his assistants. A few days ago, he ordered to fire desperately to kill all the enemies in gray-green uniforms in front of him.

Of course, not everything is so prosperous, and not everything is friendly and harmonious. In some dark corners, you can still hear distant gunshots from time to time. Complaints of robbery and murder by the German army were common, and it was not news that the Soviets shot and attacked a German patrol. Hundreds of people die for no apparent reason every day. After all, this place is still full of devastated ruins, not a bustling metropolis.

That's when Rokossovsky and Küchler stepped in front of the camera again, feeding the German propaganda machine. Just a block away, a dozen Soviet soldiers who refused to lay down their weapons ended up surrounded by a building.

The Germans did not politely ask them to come out to commend their courage and will to resist to the end. Instead, they found an engineer with a flamethrower on his back, and sprayed scorching flames with a temperature of hundreds of degrees into the building from the window. The huge pressure caused the flames to burst out from all the windows around the building in an instant, accompanied by the heart-piercing screams of the people inside.

Amidst the cruel laughter of the German soldiers, everything returned to calm, but when the people who cleaned up the corpses arrived, everyone discovered that there were 40 corpses of various kinds inside. Obviously there were quite a few civilians inside, because a corpse was holding a child in its arms—they were gathered into a group by the Soviet soldiers who rushed in, and those Soviet soldiers obviously wanted to resist... What no one expected was that It was not the Germans that rushed in, but the flames.

The last recorded German resistance at Stalingrad occurred a month after Rokossovsky ordered the surrender.