I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 160

The paratroopers’ grim prediction came true.

“Shit… Why the hell are those German bastards deploying tanks here?”

“Ugh…”

In a direct tank-to-tank battle, the remaining thousands of Panzer III tanks and their inferior units were useless.

But just because they were small, it didn’t mean that the infantry could subdue the steel beasts with their bare hands. 

The paratroopers hid and aimed their rocket launchers at the tanks. 

They couldn’t attack because there were also German infantrymen watching all sides from the trucks.

“We only have two launchers…”

Two launchers weren’t enough to unleash overwhelming firepower and suppress those more than ten vehicles. 

They might be able to destroy a couple of them if they hit well, but they would be minced by the German machine guns in an instant.

They also had to expose their upper bodies at least, instead of lying flat on the ground like now, because of the blast flame that burst out from the back.

“Hey, Ivan, what are you doing?”

“Ah, that’s the thing… Sir…”

The squad leader looked down at the veteran soldier who was fiddling with something with the warhead, with contempt.

‘Did he pick up something weird somewhere?’

“Here, here it is!”

“…What is this?”

“This is the explosive that I took out of the rocket warhead and tied together. If I shoot this, I can give them a big blow.”

The squad leader rubbed his forehead in pain as he saw the rocket warhead with chunks of explosives hanging from it.

There were plenty of rocket launchers, so he didn’t mind that, but… Anyway, it was absurd. But Ivan smiled and showed it to him.

“Our former squad leader taught me this. Trust me.”

“Fine. Then you take the launcher and shoot.”

***

“Huh? A rocket launcher!”

“Damn it. Driver, move!”

They gave the order, but the Germans had no time to react. 

The rocket launcher, which looked heavy and bulky, flew slowly and curved, but it wasn’t something that the clumsy tanks and vehicles could avoid.

“Aaaah!”

“Oh, mother…”

The rocket launcher, unfortunately, hit the tank and caused a huge explosion.

It looked heavy, and it had a lot of explosives, or maybe the ammunition and fuel inside the tank caused a secondary explosion, but the Panzer III tank literally blew up and scattered flames and debris all over.

The vehicle-mounted infantrymen on the trucks were caught off guard and screamed as they rolled on the ground.

Some of the veteran soldiers managed to regain their senses and fired at the direction where the rocket launcher came from, but the Soviet soldiers were nowhere to be seen, as if they had hidden again.

“They must be the paratroopers…”

“Is that important now? Hurry up and scatter the vehicles that can move and find them! Vehicle-mounted infantry, get off!”

“Yes!”

***

The Soviet command’s intention was exactly as they planned.

The paratroopers were not the main attack. Rather, they were closer to a diversion.

Model had singled out and defeated the paratroopers who could launch guerrilla attacks and break up the armored units, but that was exactly what the Soviets wanted.

“Even if we sacrifice 20,000 paratroopers, we will break through Warsaw as soon as possible. That’s the way to reduce the casualties of 200,000.”

Marshal Zhukov was half on fire. 

The secretary-general wanted to conquer the whole of Germany as soon as possible.

And the military, including Zhukov, had a clear deadline.

‘Defeat Germany before Japan loses to the United States.’

They had to join the war before the United States occupied Japan and ended the Pacific War. 

They had to pacify Europe in order to turn their guns to Asia.

The one week they delayed here determined the post-war order of Europe and Asia. And Zhukov knew what the secretary-general wanted.

“Advance! And take Warsaw! You can take all the Poles!”

“Yes! Understood, comrade commander!”

The Soviet army crossed the Vistula with 200,000 Polish guerrillas in front.

While they were suppressing the uprising inside Warsaw and dealing with the paratroopers who provoked battles everywhere, the front line was broken through in many places.

The Soviet army, which poured in like a flood, surrounded and annihilated the German units that had lost even their defensive line.

“Hands up! Surrender!”

“Sur, surrender!”

The Germans raised their hands one by one in front of the overwhelming numbers. The elite soldiers who had once trampled Poland, France, and Britain had no dignity left.

It wasn’t that they weren’t there, but most of the veterans had already buried their bones in the cold Soviet land, or were dragged to Siberia, or were crippled somewhere.

The recruits who filled their empty spots had no chance to grow into veterans and died in the cruel battlefield. And they put more recruits in the empty spots, and again, but now there were no more people to conscript, and each unit had a headache because of the formation.

“Hail the Führer! Hail the German nation!”

“Die!!!”

Of course, there were some who armed themselves with fanatical loyalty and charged blindly at the Soviet army.

Mostly, there were not a few of them among the SS. 

The German officers propagandized to the soldiers that if they retreated any further, their homeland would be ravaged and their families would suffer a terrible fate.

Those who had committed crimes were more sensitive and reacted immediately to such imaginations, and tried to stop the Soviet army somehow.

“You won’t surrender?”

“Fire!”

Tutatata! Tatata!

Did they think they were the heroic Spetsnaz from <Saving Private Lef>? The SS soldiers fired their machine guns with scarce ammunition and advanced, but the bullets flew in the wrong direction because of the faulty barrels.

One of the Germans, who had a jammed cartridge and a pale face, pointed his gun at the muzzle that wouldn’t fire, but he was torn apart by the Soviet’s counterattack in an instant.

Some of them didn’t care whether the Germans surrendered or not.

The Poles, who had been colonized by the Germanic states and the Russian Empire for hundreds of years, hated Germany. They hated the Soviets enough to join hands with them, but Nazi Germany had ruled Poland harshly.

“That bastard surrendered, didn’t he?”

“Huh? Did he? I didn’t hear it.”

A Polish guerrilla soldier, who threw a grenade at a German soldier who had raised his hands and surrendered, spoke to his junior soldier who looked at him with a pale face, with a natural expression.

He was bleeding profusely from his ear, which had been torn off by a bullet, but he looked like he would bite the bones of the Germans as soon as he saw them.

“That… that’s a war crime.”

“I don’t know about that, kid.”

“…”

The soldier, who spat out those words, looked at Warsaw, where the roar and smoke were rising.

A beautiful city, the home of the Poles’ hearts. The beautiful old city, the jewel of Eastern Europe, was burning.

Crunch, he gritted his teeth.

Those damn Germans. 

They destroyed that city. Not only Warsaw, but dozens of cities in Poland.

His family had been dragged to the camps, and he, who had barely escaped from the death camp and joined the Soviet army, had his teeth clenched at the Germans.

“This bastard, he’s still alive?”

The soldier shot a bullet at the head of a German soldier who was shaking and trembling in the trench with a grenade fragment on his back.

Bang!

***

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Liberation is coming! Brothers!”

“Mother…!”

The Warsaw insurgents, with their weak weapons and low training, harassed the Germans as much as they could.

Even as they died from the bullets in their heads, they shouted.

“Long live Poland! Long live liberation! Destroy the fascists…”

Bang! Another young man fell to the ground after being shot. 

The blood that bloomed like a red flower stained the wall and made a splendid picture.

“Yanek! Yanek Wisniewski! Open your eyes!”

The Polish brothers and the Soviets were slowly entering from the outskirts of the city, but the center of the city was still occupied by the Germans.

Did they get the order? Everyone felt that they were trying to retreat, but there was nothing they could do about the last person who was defending the machine gun position.

There were corpses in front of the machine gun position.

‘The bravest sons…’

The bravest among the Poles. Those who could charge into the mouth of death that was wide open, without hesitation, for their brothers and families.

The Polish flag tied to their arms was dyed red with blood and became an enemy flag.

Tatata!

The machine gun spat fire again. Another young man fell to the ground, whether he was shot or not. Should he go and save him? Is he alive? As he was wondering, he heard a siren from the sky.

The siren was speaking in German.

[The commander of the German garrison in Warsaw has surrendered. Don’t die in vain and surrender. I repeat. Surrender!]

An old Soviet fighter plane flew in the sky with a large speaker. Some of the Polish insurgents who knew German cheered.

But the Germans didn’t surrender right away. The machine gun position in front of them lifted their machine gun and shot at the Soviet fighter plane.

Tatata! 

The machine gun spat out cartridges and attacked the plane.

The Soviet plane seemed to take this as a kind of treaty violation. 

After broadcasting peacefully to the Germans to surrender, the plane that was hit by the machine gun fire dropped a bomb on the Germans.

“***!! **!”

The Germans ran out of the position and tried to avoid the bomb, but they were soon riddled with bullets by the Polish snipers who were aiming at them from all sides.

Boom! The bomb fell on the empty position and exploded, blowing up the machine gun and ammunition.

In the distance, a red flag and a white flag of Poland were flying over the city hall. The insurgents shouted with their hearts bursting as they looked at the flags fluttering in the fierce wind.

They finally reclaimed Warsaw. 

They took the capital. A cheer rose from the hearts of the insurgents.

“Wow!!! Hooray! Hooray!”

“Warsaw! We’re back!!”

“Long live the liberation of Poland!”

Despite all the resistance, the Germans were defeated. They lost Warsaw.

The surviving remnants fled out of the city one by one. There were few who could retreat orderly.

There were already rumors that 100,000 paratroopers had built an airfield and a Soviet garrison in the rear of Warsaw, that there were 20 armored divisions, and all kinds of rumors.

At least the Soviets had deployed a tremendous force, and the Germans had lost miserably.

Pushed by the collapsed defense line, the Germans, who had collapsed, tried to rebuild the defense line with the remaining units, but the Soviets eventually pushed in with overwhelming force.

“Where… where should we go?”

“…”

A new recruit who had barely survived asked a veteran, who pointed to the west without a word.

The Oder River. After the Vistula River was broken through, the only thing that could be a defense was the Oder River.

Beyond that, there was the capital of the empire, Berlin, and there was no more place to retreat.