I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 168

The world’s attention was focused on Berlin.

But Berlin was not in a position to communicate anything to the outside. 

First of all, the important government offices in the capital, where the government functions were concentrated, had evaporated in the face of the nuclear explosion. 

Along with most of the power holders.

First of all, there was no trace of the most important person, the president. 

Many people predicted that he would be hiding in a ‘secret underground bunker’, but no one could find the secret bunker because it was a secret. The people who should have known, such as the high-ranking Nazis like Goering, Goebbels, Hitler, Todt and Speer, had gone missing in the huge explosion.

And the reason they were ‘missing’ was because their deaths could not be confirmed. Not that they were alive.

In Germany, where the government functions were paralyzed, the military was the only thing that was functioning properly. But the nominal commander-in-chief of the military, the president, was in a state of absence, and the power was divided among the people like Model, the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front, Jodl, the chief of staff of the army, Doenitz, the commander-in-chief of the navy, and Goering, the commander-in-chief of the air force.

“Surrender? Surrender? How absurd! Even if the president is not here, we must continue to fight! Do you intend to sell all the Germans to those barbaric Soviet troops!”

[Stalin’s secretary-general promised a gentlemanly treatment in a letter if we surrender without resistance. He said…]

“They will plunder Germany! They will smash the wealth and prosperity that our nation has achieved with their hands!”

The relationship between Jodl, the nominal chief of staff of the entire army, and Model, the commander of a single front, but anyway, the army’s almost everything, was not clear.

Model was higher in rank and had the president’s trust, but the president was gone. 

Jodl could be seen as having the authority to command the army in the current situation, where the commander-in-chief was absent, because of his position as chief of staff.

No one had predicted the current situation. No one knew what to do.

Model, who advocated surrender, and Jodl, who advocated desperate resistance, continued to argue. 

The generals and officers in the command and control room could hear their arguments ringing.

[The wealth and prosperity are already gone! Don’t you see? If we fight, they will smash our cities one by one!]

“Even if they have such bombs, how many can they have! If the Soviet Union had so many bombs, they would have used them, what do you think is the reason for their empty threats! Model, surrender is forbidden. The staff headquarters can never agree to surrender.”

[Jodl, colonel-general!]

Bang. Jodl slammed down the phone loudly, as if to make the staff hear.

“There is no surrender! As long as the war fortress of Berlin is temporarily vacant, the highest organ of the army is our staff headquarters, and as the chief of staff, I will continue the war. Long live the German nation! Heil Hitler!”

Now, no one knew where Hitler was, but anyway, the soldiers raised their right hands and shouted.

“Heil Hitler!!”

“Heil Hitler!! Long live the German nation!”

Of course, they had their own thoughts. If the Soviet Union really had that huge and terrifying bomb in several pieces, they would have used it several times already.

The staff headquarters still had enough troops to advocate resistance. 

They would squeeze out the last person and stand in front of the Soviet troops. 

If the German nation could not have the world, then the German nation had to leave this world full of inferior races.

‘Germany still… can hold on…’

The reason why defeatists like Model were gaining ground was entirely because the president’s presence was gone. Jodl thought so. 

Model, who rose to power with the president’s trust, could not bear the situation without the president.

If they found the president and encouraged the people to lead the war again… They had to stop the Soviet troops here and preserve the German state.

Before the wolves, the foxes, the Jewish-Bolsheviks, who envied the great German nation, erased it from this world.

***

The effect of the nuclear bomb was more powerful in other places than in Berlin.

The remnants of the Arrow Cross Party, who had been left in Budapest, gave up resisting any more. 

Even after they had fallen into the hands of the Soviet troops, those who supported Horthy or the royalists remained in the minority, but they closed their mouths and bowed their heads when they saw the amazing power of the nuclear bomb.

The Soviet troops advanced without resistance, quickly. To the ‘Ostmark’, which was once Austria, to the ‘Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate’, which was once Czechoslovakia, and to the west, to the Rhine.

In France, Spain, and Italy, which were not directly facing the Soviet troops, different reactions appeared.

[Master! Master! They are going to blame everything on you, Master!]

“I know. But we… we did our best. Isn’t that enough?”

The ruler of Spain, Franco, cried out. But the old marshal was calm. He had already dissuaded him from going to Vichy France as the ambassador of Spain. He said they would dump all the responsibility on Petain and make him a scapegoat.

But Petain had already made up his mind. He was ready to give everything for the great French state and nation.

Someone had to take over the position of the head of the puppet state. 

If an old man who had become a waste could take everything and go, then there would be one more opportunity for the young people who would rebuild the state in the future. Petain had accepted the poison with that in mind.

Of course, he didn’t think it would end so soon. He never imagined that everything would turn upside down like this.

“Hahaha…”

He kept laughing hollowly. If he had known this, he wouldn’t have sent the French soldiers to the Eastern Front. 

He should have actively helped the young resistance fighters like de Gaulle.

He was driven out and kicked out by the idea of fighting to the end, even going to the Soviet Union to resist. If the colonies had helped him even once, he might have succeeded. 

The Free French Forces, who had lost their bases and troops, had nothing to do.

In the meantime, the leftists and communist resistance groups in Paris raised a general uprising. 

The German troops stationed in Paris were the best, but no one knew if they would continue to fight in this situation.

The liberator of Paris would be the Communist Party. And the Soviet Union behind them would now control France. 

He and the soldiers of the last war, whether they intended it or not, had all become traitors, and there was nothing they could change now.

“My life was not important at all…”

He said, as if to excuse himself, to the officials who looked at him. 

The officials were also frozen with icy expressions. 

There were some missing places.

‘They must have run away…’

Petain had no intention of running away. If a young bureaucrat died instead of him and took the blame, it would be a loss for France.

“If we can save France by being condemned, do so. You are…”

“Your Majesty…”

Some nodded their heads, and some just stopped as if frozen.

Petain got up slowly and walked out. The situation was unbearable for an old man who was close to ninety. He ordered his young secretary, who was supporting him next to him, in a soft voice.

“I order you as the head of state. Order the army to disarm.”

“What? Yes! I will relay it immediately.”

Of course, there was hardly any army left. 

Northern France was a Nazi military occupation zone, and there was not a single soldier that Pétain could command there. 

Not to mention if they would listen.

There was nothing he could do to reduce the bloodshed of the young communists, or rather, the French people in Paris.

The only reason he did not kill himself right away was to offer himself as a scapegoat to those who would vent their anger by killing him.

Nouwen slowly and painfully moved his steps toward his office. To spare the trouble of those who would come looking for him.

***

“I only wanted to… maintain order…”

“…”

The Paris military governor Dietrich von Choltitz bowed his head, trying to avoid the cold stares of the communists who glared at him. His excuse was of no use to those who were enraged by the death of countless comrades.

But he had something to say too. As a soldier, he could not just hand over the occupied territory. 

He had to somehow ‘maintain order’ and tried to minimize the destruction of the beautiful city of Paris during the clashes with the insurgents.

Of course, his subordinates sprayed flamethrowers to wipe out the resistance fighters hiding in the buildings, but he insisted that it was inevitable.

“I understand. But we also don’t have a clear legal status to accept your surrender…”

“…I appreciate your kindness.”

Stalin ordered them to surrender to the Allies. Otherwise, he threatened to bomb the major cities in the Ruhr area.

But there were no Allies in the strict sense on French soil. 

The French Communist Party had not yet been recognized as an ally by the major powers, and if they had to surrender, it would be to the Americans or the Soviets, but they were far away.

Perhaps by now the Americans were rushing to secure a minimum foothold in Europe…

Anyway, France had to be liberated by the hands of the French. Choltitz decided to hand over his legitimacy to the French Communist Party and ‘requested’ them to safely repatriate his subordinates. 

Maurice Thorez, the secretary-general of the Communist Party, agreed to his terms and came to this place for negotiations.

After shedding the blood of countless comrades, they finally seized the opportunity in three days.

“Long live the liberation of the homeland! Long live France!”

“Advance under the international flag! And advance again!”

Under the command of General Choltitz, the German troops stationed in Paris surrendered to the French Communist Party, which had just formed the Paris Soviet District. 

The Communist Party formed its own cabinet and planned to proclaim the Fourth Republic of France to the world.

For that, the most important thing was to claim that they had received the surrender of the German troops by their own power. 

The camera flashlights popped and the pictures of Choltitz stamping the paper were quickly printed on the newspaper and covered the streets of Paris.

The citizens came out and shouted enthusiastic cheers. 

The communists waving the red flag marched through the city, disarmed, and led the German troops out of Paris, singing the Internationale loudly.

“No noble lord or noble ideology, no cross hanging in the air can save us!”

“What saves us is these two hands of steel! Shake off the chains of slavery and go to liberation!”

No one sang the Marseillaise.

The right-wing had done nothing, and the socialists had joined the communist uprising individually or in small groups, so they could not claim any credit. 

The German troops surrendered not to the Resistance National Council, but to the Communist Party itself.

“Now France is theirs…”

Some muttered that, looking at the street from the alley. With a gloomy face on this joyful day of liberation. France was liberated through the uprising controlled and supported by the Soviets.

‘Germany is gone and the Soviets are coming…’

Looking at Thorez, who proclaimed the establishment of the Paris Soviet from the podium with a powerful voice, many right-wingers thought that in their minds.

If they said it out loud, they could be lynched and killed on the spot.

***

The panic did not only hit Europe. 

The Far East, thousands of kilometers away from the nuclear explosion, was also shocked by the diplomatic situation.

The Japanese cabinet was in chaos. Prime Minister Tojo Hideki resigned, and the cabinet also announced its resignation, taking responsibility for not predicting the current situation. 

The critics denounced this as a trick to avoid responsibility, but they were also in a comfortable position where they did not have to take responsibility.

The old baron, Suzuki Kantaro, who was newly appointed as prime minister by Hirohito, had to propose a new plan to the stiff military.

“We have to… devise a strategy to stop the United States, and the key is to get along with the Soviet Union.”

His logic was simple. Now that Germany, their common enemy, had fallen, the Soviet Union would wage a war with the United States for the world.

But the United States was clearly superior to the Soviet Union in terms of productivity, and even if the Soviet Union had made a powerful bomb by some strange trick, the United States would also be able to do so. 

Therefore, as the second power in the world, the Soviet Union would do best to make Japan, the third power, an ally to contain the United States!

For that, they had to find a way to get along with the Soviet Union first. 

This was the strategy that the old prime minister had put forward.

As he was talking, he ran out of breath and paused for a moment, when a young officer kicked open the door of the conference room and came in.

“Do you know where this is! How rude!”

“I apologize for the rudeness. But this is an urgent report!”

“What is it that you are doing?”

The young officer, who had caught his breath for a moment, looked very worried and took out a bunch of papers from his pocket.

“The Soviet Union has recognized the independence of Korea!”