I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 11

The toy train goes chugging along, carrying tanks and oil~

I hummed the nursery rhyme I used to sing when I was young, as I rummaged through the documents again. 

This was the only way to cheer myself up and cope with the work that Stalin, that workaholic bastard, had left me. 

I forced myself to suppress the frustration that was rising again. 

How could he do this every day…?

I picked up the report on Lend-Lease that I had ordered to be analyzed. 

I didn’t know how much money Molotov could get from the US, but it should be possible anyway. 

Roosevelt was a pro-Soviet and anti-German leader, and he knew the value of the Soviet Union fighting against Germany on the continent.

We were also a democracy, albeit a ‘concentrated’ one! 

We could get help from the arsenal of democracy! 

Hehehe. 

I felt a little better thinking that I wouldn’t have to manage production and just receive the supplies from others.

The truth was, Germany was the biggest bully in Europe. 

The Soviet Union was an ideological adversary of the Western imperialist countries, and adventurers like Trotsky had advocated for world revolution, but after Stalin came to power, we declared one-country socialism and quietly played by ourselves.

We did split Poland with Germany, but that was because Poland was a bully who beat up all the neighboring countries. 

Honestly, how could we let it go after we got hit by them in the Soviet-Polish War during the civil war?

Other than that, the Soviet Union’s foreign policy was strictly avoiding war and restraining expansion.

To the extent that the imperialist countries that invaded and massacred Africa-Asia-Latin America couldn’t dare criticize us. 

A threat to peace? 

If they wanted to claim that helping the oppressed people of the third world overthrow their oppressors was a threat to peace, then let them.

Anyway, the Lend-Lease report was easy to read. 

War material production was something I had never touched as a college student, but Lend-Lease was something I knew a bit about. 

It was mostly diplomatic content, and the big picture was more important than the details.

The report covered the routes I had ordered to be analyzed. 

The route from the Arctic Ocean to Murmansk, the Indian Ocean route from the Persian Gulf across Iran, and the Pacific route to Vladivostok in the Far East. 

It wrote about how much traffic each port and connected railway could handle…

“Bring me Kuznetsov right now! Hurry!!! And Shaposhnikov and Vasilevsky too!”

The secretaries who saw me shouting like a madman ran out hastily and made emergency calls. 

Why was he suddenly acting like that? 

He was just looking at some documents. 

They couldn’t relax when they saw him, who could hold their lives in his hands at any time.

They clearly wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. 

I waved my hand at them. 

They ran away like they had received an amnesty.

In my office where papers were flying around, I sank deep into my chair.

Why… Why didn’t I think of this? 

No, what should I do now?

Kuznetsov, Shaposhnikov, and Vasilevsky stood politely in front of me with nervous expressions. 

I quickly sorted out my chaotic thoughts and looked at Kuznetsov. 

He scratched his back of his head nervously as I stared at him.

“Do you know Bismarck?”

“Yes?”

He answered blankly. 

Shaposhnikov and Vasilevsky also looked at me as if they were wondering what I was talking about. 

Kuznetsov scratched his head again and answered.

“Which… which Bismarck are you talking about? The prime minister of Prussia? Or the battleship?”

“Of course the latter. When did the battleship Bismarck sink?”

“Yes? What are you talking about…”

He still gave me a dumbfounded answer. 

I slammed my desk.

“Don’t you know that as the navy commander-in-chief? What are you doing!”

A pile of papers fell to the floor with a flutter. 

The three generals all looked puzzled. 

Shaposhnikov and Vasilevsky looked at each other and then at me. 

Vasilevsky cautiously spoke to me.

“Secretary General, as far as I know, the battleship Bismarck has never sunk. Where did you hear that Bismarck had sunk?”

“What?”

I almost bit my tongue as I closed my mouth.

“Didn’t the British bastards sink the battleship Bismarck in May this year? In the Atlantic? They were so pissed off by HMS Hood being sunk that they dragged their entire home fleet and beat it to a pulp?”

“If you mean May this year… Bismarck sank then? The Prinz Eugen of the Kriegsmarine did sink then, but… are you not confusing that with the sinking of the British battleships King George V and Prince of Wales?”

That day. 

I was buried in a pile of papers in my office until late at night.

However, these documents were different from the others. 

They were not about the Soviet Union’s war performance, but about Nazi Germany’s war and its detailed results, which I had ordered to be made earlier. 

They recorded the events and timelines that had occurred since about 10 years ago.

My head hurt. 

I tried to recall the exact numbers that were buried deep in my mind, but I honestly couldn’t remember them well. 

My interest had always been in the toxic war, the Eastern Front, not the Western Front.

Especially, I was a Soviet fan, not a Nazi fan. 

I was somewhat interested in Hitler’s mistakes as the Soviet Union’s rival, but I had no interest at all in the French ‘six-week’ guys or the British imperialists! 

But still, I remembered some of the important events…

“No… No… This is…”

At some point, things started to appear that were different from what I knew. 

The 300,000 British troops that should have safely evacuated from Dunkirk, according to the records, less than 30,000 of them returned to Britain.

The French battleships that should have surrendered or scuttled themselves to the British at Portsmouth, Mers-el-Kebir, and Toulon were successfully acquired by the Kriegsmarine.

The Battle of Britain… was not a German air offensive, but only a small-scale deterrence operation. 

And the German air force did not suffer heavy losses and was still fighting fiercely with the British fighters. 

No wonder! 

They had too many planes on our side…

The Norwegian invasion and the Bismarck chase were also very different from what I remembered. 

The battleship Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen set out for a commerce raiding mission as usual, but they had several escort forces attached.

In the original history, only Hood was sunk and Prince of Wales escaped safely, but in this report, Prince of Wales was also sunk by the German U-boats’ torpedo attack. 

The enraged British navy dragged their entire home fleet and tried to avenge Bismarck, but this time they lost many of their main ships, including King George V.

The battleship Bismarck itself should have sunk here, but according to the report, Bismarck safely returned to Brest, a Vichy France port, and went into repair.

I began to understand Churchill’s attitude.

“Don’t you ever utter such bloody shit. Oh, translate it properly.”

“…Is that so?”

He sounded like an angry old man. 

I had lived in Korea for more than 20 years, so even if I couldn’t speak well, I could understand English poorly enough. 

I understood what Churchill said, ‘Bloody shit’.

Our interpreter hesitated and translated Churchill’s words politely.

He probably didn’t imagine that I could speak English? 

I had maintained this posture to receive the supplies from Britain, but suddenly my blood pressure soared.

The German army advanced in northwestern Ukraine, but they hardly made any progress in the southwest. 

They finally broke through and threatened Kiev, but they only formed a long salient.

The southern Ukraine, Odessa and Sevastopol, the major ports on the Black Sea coast, were still intact. 

The Germans couldn’t even get close to Sevastopol, the home port of the Black Sea Fleet.

Accordingly, our navy planned to use the power of the Black Sea Fleet, which was a bully in the Black Sea, to strike at Romania’s port of Constanta. 

I asked Churchill if he could ‘rent’ me a battleship for gold in case I could use it here, but he refused vehemently. He even cursed at me.

If Japan started a Pacific War and attacked British colonies and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, wouldn’t it be cheaper to get them now than later – I tried to poke him with that thought and regretted it.

But who knew their fleet would be so plundered…!

“The distribution of Britain’s naval forces is as follows. First of all, the main bases are London and Portsmouth on Britain Island, Gibraltar on the Mediterranean…”

As a ‘British Empire’, a ‘country where the sun never sets’, Britain’s fleet was spread all over the world. 

To maintain their colonies across five oceans and six continents, Britain deployed their naval forces worldwide.

Among them, Britain gave up on the small islands in the Caribbean first. 

They handed them over to the US and received 50 destroyers to catch German submarines.

Even then, Britain’s fleet could be divided into four major parts. 

The Home Fleet that controlled Britain and the Atlantic Ocean; The Mediterranean Fleet that guarded Gibraltar and Suez; The Indian Ocean Fleet that protected India’s colonies; And finally The Far East Fleet stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

This reflected the British strategy of world domination. 

The most important colony for Britain was India, which was called the royal pearl. 

The Home Fleet, which protected the British homeland, the Indian Ocean Fleet, which protected India, and the Mediterranean Fleet, which connected them through the Suez Canal, were all essential. 

The Far East Fleet, which protected the Pacific colonies, was a bonus.

Kuznetsov explained this to the ignorant army dogs who knew nothing about this field.

“So… you’re saying that Nazi Germany has a local advantage right now?”

“That’s right! No matter how huge the Royal Navy is, the Kriegsmarine has gained the French fleet and won several major battles…”

Churchill, a stubborn imperialist, never gave up on the colonies. 

He kept his fleets in various places to defend them, and he seemed to think that Germany would never cross the English Channel.

Meanwhile, Germany landed a few heavy punches on the British Home Fleet and also absorbed the entire navy of Vichy France. 

France had been trampled by Germany in just six weeks, but it was still the fourth strongest naval power in the world (after Britain, America and Japan) and this massive force was swallowed by Kriegsmarine, which was rebuilding its navy.

And on top of that, the Italian navy – Regia Marina – was on Germany’s side. Of course, the Italian navy was stuck by the British Mediterranean Fleet stationed in Gibraltar and Suez, but… 

The Taranto raid, which had destroyed the Italian navy in real history, had failed this time. 

They were said to be fighting fiercely with the British Mediterranean Fleet in Malta, which was a battleground in the Mediterranean.

“Hmm… so it’s 3 to 1 then…?”

“Yes, that’s right. Britain has to fight against three fleets with only its Home Fleet and Mediterranean Fleet.”

The fact that Kriegsmarine had a full-fledged surface fleet had several meanings for the Soviet Union.

And the most important thing among them was Lend-Lease.

The United States and the Soviet Union were separated by different continents, so they could only deliver supplies through sea transportation. 

But Germany could now smash this route at will. 

It was already terrifying enough with U-boats, but now they had surface ships for commerce raiding!

If the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean became battlefields, then two routes of Lend-Lease would be blocked. 

The route from the North Atlantic to Murmansk via Scandinavia would be patrolled by the German fleet. 

And the route from the Indian Ocean via Suez would be blocked by the Italian fleet in the Mediterranean.

“What should we do about this…?”

He sighed for the first time. 

Ha… 

The Soviet naval power was extremely weak. 

At best, they had a few old battleships from World War I era. 

And they were trapped in Finland or the Black Sea and couldn’t even get out.

The Soviet navy that had lost to the American navy that had lost to Japan that had lost to Britain that had lost to Germany had nothing to do at all. 

Should they just sit and play coastal artillery?

“Isn’t there only one way to transport them through Vladivostok, Comrade Secretary…”

“I guess so…”

The Vladivostok route was still safe because there was still a long way to go before the Pacific War. 

But it was damn far.

They had to cross the largest ocean in the world, the Pacific Ocean, and then take the longest railway in the world, the Trans-Siberian Railway. 

Ah… My Lend-Lease…!

I thought I could finally get some early benefits… 

Why can’t I eat even when I have Lend-Lease? 

Why!