＜ Episode 229 >
“The cavalry is needed right now, immediately.”
The model who entered the wolf’s den caught Hitler’s gaze directly.
“Furer, the Maginot line is collapsing faster than expected. There are holes in the kitchen fishing boats, and the Russian army is rushing through them.”
“All the defenses the Untermens have built are like that.”
“Now there are two large defenses remaining until the reserve forces designated by Fürer are deployed. Even then, the 6th line of defense was heavily attacked due to its large anti-aircraft gun positions and has not yet been restored.”
Due to the structure of the Maginot Line, all materials and troops are moved underground, and large-scale minefields and killing areas are arranged on the ground. It is also the reason why the model failed to maneuver and defend by entering the armored forces.
You can’t force friendly tanks into friendly minefields.
“It is highly likely that the Maginot Line will collapse sooner or later. We need to try mobile defense with the cavalry.”
There was only one thing the model asked for. It is to turn to defense by disabling at least some of the standby orders of the armored units tied to the rear.
“It is a reasonable strategy to launch a counterattack when the enemy has reached the end of the offensive, but it is a goal that cannot be achieved with outdated fortress ships such as the Maginot Line.”
“For a full-scale counterattack, you need to have as much power as possible, so what’s the use of tanks that can’t be deployed when you need them!”
“Now is the moment you need, Main Fürer.”
Neither the National Defense Forces nor the SS did not interfere with the model and Hitler’s rhetoric and merely kept silent.
The winner of that fight was the model.
It was very difficult to convince Hitler that, since Sedan was falling apart, that the large army in Alsace-Lorraine was just a number on paper, but once he did, Hitler handed over all power to Model, a trusted general.
And the model’s first order was to abandon the kitchen fishing boat.
“Anyway, all fortress guns, bunkers, and strongholds have been destroyed by abandoning the main fishing boat and moving the remaining supplies and troops to the 6th and 7th defenses through the passage that has not yet collapsed.”
The main fishing vessel has already lost all its functions and has become a huge pile of concrete, and the 6th defense vessel, which is a duplicate of the 4th defense line, has already been hit several times by blind ballistic missiles and seismic bombs from Russian aircraft trying to silence the enemy anti-aircraft battery, and many of its functions are was after the loss of
The 6th Defense Line is used to buy time for the redeployment of the armored units, and the 7th Defense Line, the last line of defense, is used to limit the enemy’s activities, while the armored units engage in maneuver warfare to stop the enemy. Anyway, it was an inevitable choice because there was not enough space to conduct a mobile battle other than that.
But news from the South greatly shook the plan.
***
“Multiple enemy fighters approaching!”
Hundreds of fighter jets approached the Stukas.
Stuka ace Hans Ulrich Rudel, who was piloting the cannon bird, Kanonenfogel, noticed the type of fighter.
“Pokewolf? Damn it.”
I’ve heard that Fokewolf’s facilities and technicians, which have not been introduced, are being captured by the Russian army and are producing fighters for the new governments of Russia and Germany, but it must be true.
Pokewolf fighters and single-seat fighters with inverted gull-shaped wings flew like a swarm of bees.
In response, German fighters, including the Bf109, also flew in, but their numbers were pushed back.
– Kwaang!
In the meantime, Rudel evaded the rain of fire and hit the top of the enemy tank with a 3,7 cm cannon, turning it into a ball of fire.
Rudel sharpened his teeth when he saw a junior pilot who was hit by an anti-aircraft gun on the flap and crashed into an enemy tank with a bomb because his speed could not be controlled.
The Russian Air Force has now reached a level of quality with its pilots alone. In addition, the German New Government Army released and rearmad not only newly recruited troops but also prisoners of war who were not obsessed with Nazism and determined that they could be recycled and used as key troops. , was also incorporated into the new government army. Naturally, the rebuilt German Imperial Army, which was well-supplied, had to outperform the poorly-supplied Nazi German Army.
So, the air battle was close to a whistle.
In fact, all they had to do was block the Russian airstrikes while mobilizing the remaining Luftwaffe forces over the Maginot Line and responding with a defensive strategy with the support of anti-aircraft artillery fire. Expecting to overwhelm the thief seemed like a thief.
In the end, Manstein took away a significant part of the Luftwaffe’s air power, and when the bombing of London began, the British withdrew, and the balance of the Maginot line was disrupted.
– Tong Tong Tong!
A Pokewolf fighter that followed closely opened fire with machine guns. Rudel barely evaded and looked for a friendly flag, but the friendly flag was only seen sporadically, and when he turned his head, it was almost always a red flag.
This was the stage where we had to think about landing alive rather than catching the enemy tank.
***
German Army Headquarters, Lyon, Southern France.
Only bad news was transmitted on the front lines.
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Manstein clenched his teeth. It couldn’t even be called progress.
Even with a force that could not significantly overwhelm the enemy, they barely broke through the Russian defense line and established a bridgehead, but only half of the initial armored force was blown away by moving several kilometers all day.
The model was able to mobilize additional troops thanks to the negotiation, but the enemy was maintaining a solid second line of defense, and the handsome Tiger and Panther had the worst reliability, with almost 20% of them becoming incapacitated even though they had never fought a battle.
Of course, it must be taken into account that it was put into an offensive to cut the enemy in the mountainous area near the Alps in the Grenoble direction, but even so, it could not be denied that the reliability was excessively bad.
And even if it lacked credibility, it didn’t come out as effective against the enemy armored forces as it had promised.
Still, Manstein persistently regrouped and attacked. The Russian army, which was able to occupy an advantageous position because of the defensive situation, built a tank and was blocking the German and British offensives on the advantageous terrain.
‘They should have pushed them out before they could form a proper beachhead, damn it, you bastard Hitler!’
I couldn’t openly criticize Hitler because if he criticized him openly, he would be accused of being a traitor with the new German government and executed without even knowing it.
In the same way for Toulouse, the offensive with the Iberian garrison was stopped without even reaching the target point of Montpellier.
In addition, since the country had to dedicate its garrison to the Netherlands, there was no way to concentrate the troops.
“Sir, this is a call from the Italian Navy. No more attempts to block supply lines by means other than submarines are possible.”
“What?”
“Impero was attacked by Russian aircraft six hours ago and sank in the Ionian Sea. They say we can no longer fight for supremacy in the Mediterranean.”
“Didn’t Johann the Vitt sink too two days ago?”
“Yes, I was hit by a Russian long-range artillery near the Netherlands…”
“… Yes, that’s it.”
Three weeks ago, the Four Me Doubles were sunk in Biscay Bay. A Russian submarine that had escaped into the Atlantic Ocean fired a torpedo and escaped leisurely.
As the battlecruisers Johan de Vitt and Impero were sunk, there was no other means of interfering with Russian transport operations except submarines and aircraft.
And airplanes do not have the capacity to mobilize. CAS for the ground forces alone is insufficient, and production is not keeping up with consumption due to the violence in the factory area and all kinds of sabotage.
If this trend continues, does ‘Dear Führer’ know that aircraft stockpiles will soon run out? What is another train?
In every way, it was falling apart, unable to deal with the Russian army. No matter how optimistic they were, they could not conclude that Britain and Germany would work together to win against Russia and the United States.
The British army was also criticized for not doing anything right. The German army’s evaluation of the British army was only slightly better than that of the Italian army.
Considering that Nazism itself was hostile to Britain and the United States in the first place, the fact that it was allied with Britain and fought against Russia, the same Aryan brother, was a significant element of criticism within Nazism as well.
No one wanted to bear the enormous burden of daring to challenge the Fürer dynasty.
Of course, this made it impossible to attempt a coup d’état like the original history against Manstein and the Wehrmacht in the first place.
It is not a situation where there is a two-sided front as in the original history, it is a situation in which Russia is in a stand-alone confrontation, and it is not that Hitler himself did not attempt a ceasefire.
In the first place, the current grand strategy itself was to collapse Russia’s main force and conclude a ceasefire with Russia, so the argument for a ceasefire with the Allied Powers was nothing new, like the argument of the Black Orchestra that caused the attempted assassination of Hitler in the original history.
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Moreover, as soon as Russia occupied German territory, a new government was formed. In the state of the war, if they escaped and individually pledged allegiance to the new German government, they would all become rebels and be purged by the German new government.
Until now, the Russian military had no intention of accepting such a deal, but even if they negotiated to guarantee their lives and status, they would have to tremble, not knowing when they would be caught and purged.
Rather, because the entire country was lost, the Defense Forces were firmly united around Hitler.
However, kneading the dough tightly doesn’t stop the steel hammer. The German army was being torn apart by a steel hammer that was constantly beating the Germans in the South and Central.
In fact, it was not such a burdensome option for the National Defense Forces. It would be enough if the Nazis, who had no land anyway, were not recognized as the orthodox government.
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Manstein himself had heard propaganda broadcasts from the new German government urging him to choose between loyalty to the Hohenzollern imperial court and the German people, or to the Nazi fanatics.
Even if you can’t play side roles with foreign powers, if your own government is split in two, can’t you choose which side you will be loyal to?
A savvy model general would never have thought of it that way, but Manstein was a capable but fundamentally opportunist.