Chapter 507 Death Diary

The tragic situation of the German army described in the war report made Stalin excited and happy, just like a child.

After searching through boxes and cabinets, Stalin finally found the captured report that he had just read not long ago from the drawer of his desk.

This war report collected by Comrade Stalin, the father, has a very interesting origin. It was not compiled into a book by the Soviet army itself, but a valuable trophy looted from a German lieutenant by the Soviet troops in the winter counterattack on the front line.

To be more precise, this small leather book held in the hands of Comrade Stalin, the father, should be said to be a diary.

"December 21, light snow."

"It was too late, and we didn't have any heavy artillery support. They were all left on the road of retreat, and we didn't even have a decent anti-tank gun. Our battalion was used as a so-called temporary reserve with such equipment and was thrown into a gap in the position that had just been torn open by the Ivan tank."

"Of course, those Ivans fired at us with tank guns and machine guns, and a huge number of infantry groups rushed towards us like a tsunami! Although I didn't see the tsunami with my own eyes, What does it look like, but I believe it is definitely not as fierce as Ivan's infantry group charge. "

"Molson's MG34 was frozen to death. It lacked winter oil and could not fire at all. Not long after, Ivan and his men hit us in the face like an iron wall and pushed us all back. Almost at the same time as Ivan and his men drove us away, I found that my MP40 submachine gun bullets were exhausted again!"

The diary has obvious signs of sudden interruption here, and it seems that the author was forced to stop writing halfway because of some unexpected incident.

After reaching out and gently turning over a page, the German lieutenant, who obviously did not die suddenly, once again left his last handwriting.

"December 22, heavy snow."

"We were repelled by Ivan, but now it seems that this is just as it should be. The soldiers began to retreat in large numbers in an unorderly manner. In order to stop this situation, I and several other officers pulled out our pistols and tried to stop them."

"But all efforts seemed so pale and powerless. We failed to restore the proper order in this chaos. The fleeing soldiers broke through the obstruction of our officers, and any equipment that was slightly inconvenient to carry and would cause a burden was thrown all over the ground. No one cared whether these equipment would fall into Ivan's hands and turn around to attack us."

"The road of retreat was littered with dead horses and broken cars, cars and carriages. Groups of fleeing soldiers like beggars wrapped in Ivan's clothes of dead people, clothes of dead comrades, and tattered blankets for sleeping, they are not like the German army in our impression. "

"The limping team moved forward very slowly, looking like the scene of Napoleon's retreat in school. Of course, there were no planes when Napoleon retreated, and we were visited by Ivan's attack planes almost every few minutes. Soldiers call those planes that can launch rockets flying tanks or flying T34s, which are great planes. "

The diary written here stopped abruptly again and left a blank, but after just a few lines, it started again and continued to leave traces.

"We, the survivors of this unprecedented winter disaster, now have only one very far-fetched wish: I hope the Führer can impose the most severe sanctions on the sinners who caused this disaster!"

Many of the German soldiers fighting on the front line did not know that it was the Führer, whom they admired very much, who personally issued the order to hold their positions that would send them to hell.

The German frontline commanders, who they mistakenly thought were the ultimate culprits, were willing to do anything and even risk losing their jobs to forcibly defy Hitler's orders. The most unfair thing in the world is that the people you tried to save ended up blaming you for everything.

Of course, Guderian, who had been driven home by Hitler to live a life of retirement, was not aware of all this.

After carefully combining the frontline summary report he had just read with the contents recorded in the German lieutenant's diary, Comrade Stalin, who was extremely excited, stood up from his chair in an instant, holding his precious corn pipe tightly and pacing back and forth in the office.

Stalin believed that after considering everything together, it was enough to show that the German order on the front line had fallen into unprecedented chaos, and these poor German soldiers who were about to be frozen to death doubted whether they were really invincible as Goebbels had advertised.

The German soldiers who were not aware of the real situation complained about the blind command of the front-line generals for no reason, which made the soldiers below fall into the quagmire of the Winter War and could not extricate themselves.

Regardless of whether the wishful thinking of these German soldiers who were not aware of the real situation in Berlin was correct, in the eyes of Comrade Stalin, the Patriotic War, which caused heavy casualties to the Soviet army and was extremely difficult, had indeed entered a new strategic stage.

Thinking of this, Comrade Stalin, who was in an excited state, immediately turned around and grabbed the phone on the table, and gave an order to the operator who was on standby at the other end of the phone without hesitation.

"Tell Comrade Shaposhnikov to come to my office!"

The orders of the Soviet supreme leader are always carried out vigorously.

Less than half an hour later, Marshal Shaposhnikov, the chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, who had hurried all the way in the dust, appeared in front of Stalin.

"Look here, Comrade Shaposhnikov, those Germans have been repelled by us for at least 200 kilometers. They are now tired and in a mess. How do you think we should launch a summer counterattack?"

The arrival of spring does not mean that winter in the Soviet Union is completely over.

The permafrost layer several meters deep will not be completely thawed until at least the end of April to the beginning of May. The melted snow and ice at this stage will make the road muddy and impossible to carry out large-scale long-distance maneuvers.

Stalin, who was well aware of this situation, did not intend to rush into action before the road conditions were completely improved, and Stalin had reason to believe that those Germans would definitely not be able to take the initiative to attack at this time. How to prepare for the upcoming summer counterattack was Stalin's top priority at this moment.