I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 165

“Salute to the Comrade Secretary!”

Snap!

At the secret air force base near Smolensk, I received the salute of the pilots who were about to bomb Berlin.

At the end of December, despite the cold blizzard, they saluted with dignity and without a tremor.

Their chests were shining with countless medals. 

They were the ace pilots who had survived dozens of missions in the overwhelming disadvantage. 

They were proud of their achievements.

“Nice to meet you, Colonel Marina Raskova!”

“It’s an honor to meet you, Comrade Secretary!”

She was the leader of the bombing squadron that was selected after a rigorous examination. 

She was the first female pilot of the Soviet Union and the founder of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, nicknamed ‘The Night Witches’.

She had been active as a bomber pilot since the beginning of the war. She was famous for breaking through the German fighters and anti-aircraft guns in the air superiority and bombing the targets accurately.

She had also participated in the field test of the Tupolev-4 medium bomber, which was a copy of the American B-29. 

She was the best choice to fly the Tupolev medium bomber, which was selected as the nuclear bomb carrier. She showed her firm determination with her eyes.

The other pilots were also the best ones in the Soviet Air Force. 

The medals on their chests were not given for nothing. 

They all stood straight and waited for my command with confidence.

“You are the best pilots in our Soviet Union Air Force. And the Motherland has entrusted you with a very important, very important mission.”

“Just give us the order, Comrade Secretary!”

The pilots answered in unison. Technically, they knew exactly what to do.

They had been training to drop the atomic bomb in the Siberian plains. 

Of course, they didn’t know exactly what it was.

They had trained for months to drop the bomb from 9,000 meters of high altitude, and to dive and turn away from the predicted range of the bomb as soon as they dropped it. 

They had the best results among several squadrons.

The bombing squadron consisted of seven Tu-4 bombers. 

The squadron leader Marina Raskova started to explain to me in a clear voice.

“Of the seven bombers, three are weather observation planes. One is a spare plane and the remaining three are the actual ‘strike’ planes.”

Of course, I knew this very well, but it was quite interesting to hear it from someone else’s mouth, especially from someone who was directly in charge of the nuclear bombing. 

The others also seemed to be tense and listened with bated breath.

“One of the three strike planes is responsible for filming and observing the explosion, and another one is responsible for measuring the blast force. The last one, the one I will fly…”

“Anna Ryubatovich?”

“Yes… haha… it’s my mother’s maiden name.”

She smiled awkwardly. A strange déjà vu came over me.

The name of the first plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was ‘Enola Gay’. 

It was named after the mother of the bomber.

Historically, Marina Raskova should have been dead by now. 

In January of 1943, near Stalingrad, she crashed while making an emergency landing.

History had changed a lot, and millions who should have died didn’t, and many cities survived safely from the flames of war. Why did the nuclear bomber pilots name their planes after their mothers?

Anyway, I didn’t have much time to ponder this weirdness.

****

The atomic bomb had not yet been loaded on the plane. 

I had to leave the runway without seeing the loading scene, fearing the explosion during the loading process. I was ‘too important a person’.

Just in case, just in case, I asked the air force commander Novikov in the secretary’s special armored vehicle, which was patched with lead glass.

“…How did Vasily do?”

“!!!”

“Didn’t you ask, Comrade Secretary?”

Beria, who was proud of developing the nuclear bomb under his responsibility, scolded Novikov, who hesitated. When I stopped him, Beria shut his mouth, but Novikov still looked scared.

“…He… he succeeded.”

“…Good…”

The fire of the nuclear bomb would burn hundreds of thousands of civilians in Berlin. It was a relief and a tragedy that the ‘child’ was freed from the painful death.

Basilievsky, who sensed my reluctance to drop the weapon of mass destruction on the civilians, said.

“Can’t we drop a leaflet to evacuate the civilians immediately?”

“Don’t you think they will use the civilians as shields?”

Nazi Germany would do worse than that. They used Jews and Soviet prisoners of war as meat shields, why wouldn’t they sacrifice civilians?

In the same vein, the proposals to warn the bombing location or to explode it in the air were rejected. 

Could that stop the madness of Nazi Germany? Wouldn’t it make them more furious?

It was too extravagant to discuss humanitarianism while facing a mad enemy. 

The ones who conscripted millions of old people and children to the front line would never take measures to reduce the damage to civilians.

“Most of the Soviet prisoners of war are fortunately not in Germany, but in other places. There are very few in Berlin…”

“I guess so. Who would bother to make a concentration camp in the capital?”

They hated to give up even an inch of the land of the Germanic nation to the inferior races. 

In the actual history, too, the soldiers who were captured after the invasion of France, such as Algerians or Senegalese from the colonies, were not held in the mainland, but in other places.

The famous Auschwitz and Birkenau camps were also in the occupied Polish territory. 

They had captured many Jews from the local area in the first place.

“Ah! The bombers just took off!”

“Really?”

I looked out the window and saw the faint planes taking off.

They were going to end all wars with something bigger than any bomb.

Maybe humanity will make thousands, tens of thousands of those things in the future and use them as tools to threaten each other, but you will reduce the number of people who deserve to die.

Maybe nuclear weapons will be used more than once in this world. The Soviet Union had already prepared a few more nuclear weapons, and the reactors in the secret cities that were constantly operating were spewing out plutonium, the material for them.

‘Two? Three?’

How many would it take to make Japan, more insane than Germany, surrender? 

The US military had not yet beaten Japan as much as they did in the actual history of 1944 and 1945. They had just started to burn down the major cities of Japan with strategic bombing, so Japan still had a lot of resistance left.

Beria, who was ‘competent’ beyond compare, had already drawn up a list of priorities for bombing in Japan.

Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Yokohama, Kobe… It seemed like he just sorted the cities in Japan by population, but who knows.

It seemed like a waste of time to worry about how many Japanese civilians would die or get hurt when he had to deal with the diplomatic relations with other countries in the future. 

Western European countries like France, Britain, Italy and Spain, Eastern European countries that would become our satellite states, and China, Japan and Korea.

“Let’s go to Moscow quickly! I’m feeling tired.”

***

Christmas in Germany in 1943 was hardly a happy anniversary to spend with family.

Many families had their sons or fathers dragged into the war. 

Some of them were shivering in the cold of Russia, some of them had returned as ashes, and some of them had disappeared without ever returning.

Large roast goose and sausage, beer and cider full of cream, gingerbread and cake full of raisins were now luxuries of the distant past that were hardly remembered.

The Nazi regime, which hated the fact that baby Jesus came in the ‘dirty Jew’ body, tried to change Christmas into something that was mixed with Germanic mythology.

“Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler!”

A huge fir tree stood at the crossroads of Berlin Square. 

The tree, which would have been called a ‘Christmas tree’ in the past, was called a ‘yule tree’ according to the official propaganda of the Nazi party.

The tree, which was said to have been used in the festival to honor the Germanic god Odin, had a flashing swastika on top and looked down on the passing people.

People stopped in front of it and shouted Heil Hitler or something like that when they met someone they knew. As if to make others hear. 

The Nazi party restricted the lives of the people in all sorts of places.

For example, they could no longer put a star on top of the tree.

“Christmas is originally a traditional festival of the Germanic people! The Latin people have changed it to their own way, but we must restore the tradition of the Germanic people who celebrate the winter solstice!”

Their ancestors believed that the sun was born anew after the winter solstice. Therefore, the Germans should rightly put a swastika, a symbol of the sun, instead of a star that the Jew-Bolsheviks love so much! Goebbels ranted on the radio with his crow-like voice.

No matter what the tree had on it, or what Dr. Goebbels said, the people didn’t pay much attention. 

Those who resisted the Nazis were dragged away somewhere, and their places were filled with those who fervently praised the Nazi propaganda.

The Germans of this era were used to pretending to listen to something and ignoring something.

***

“Is the Führer still refusing to meet?”

“Yes, he is. Minister of Propaganda, please wait a little longer.”

Goebbels, who was tapping his feet nervously, turned away with a grimace as the Führer’s secretary, Martin Bormann, spoke.

The Führer had been hiding in a bunker under Berlin and refusing to meet anyone since the scientist in charge of his ‘secret project’, Werner Heisenberg, went missing.

Bormann, who was the Führer’s most trusted secretary and closest confidant, was the only one who received the Führer’s orders from outside the door and delivered them to the people.

That too seemed like nothing but a fit of rage and irritation.

Goebbels, who had planted his own people near the Führer’s office, had a rough idea. 

The Führer had invested a huge amount of money in a secret project to make a very powerful bomb, but the result was a failure.

Heisenberg had boldly sabotaged the plan. 

He had reported false results to the Führer that did not actually come out, and the Führer had believed his lies and gave him the budget as he asked.

The result of the project that had devoured the budget that should have gone to the military, the civilian life and welfare, and monopolized thousands of workers, was nothing. 

The scientists who saw the research results left by Heisenberg said.

“These contents are only theoretical, and they are far from actually making something.”

“Are you saying that you made a bomb with this? Well, maybe five years? Ten years? Anyway, it will take quite some time.”

The Führer had despaired of this and built a secret bunker underground and hid in it, doing nothing. 

He didn’t actually do much, and it was just a symbolic thing, and he also made a lot of unnecessary interference, so nothing changed much.

But Goebbels, who was responsible for handling that symbol, was baffled. His power was nothing compared to that of Göring, who had a huge armed group of the air force, Speer, who had twisted the budget and production rights, Himmler, who had hundreds of thousands of troops under his command, or Bormann, who had the Führer’s trust and power as a secretary and a doorman.

He had become a powerful figure only with the Führer’s trust and confidence, but after the Führer disappeared, his position was shrinking in the power vacuum.

He got into the limousine that was waiting for him, and Goebbels bit his thumb. It was his habit when he was nervous.

‘Damn it, I have to do something…’

Just then, the siren started to ring. It was a familiar air raid warning. 

Looking out the window, he saw people on the street hurriedly hiding in alleys and buildings. 

An air raid on the great capital of the empire, Berlin…

“Damn it, another air raid? Göring, what the hell is that bastard doing?”

“Shall we turn the car around, Minister?”

“No, never mind. Let’s go quickly.”

Of course, the Soviet or American forces had very few bombs that they could actually drop on Berlin. 

Goebbels believed that and wanted to head to his mansion on the outskirts of Berlin as soon as possible.

Until something huge flashed in the sky.