Chapter 1004: The Soviet Rear

While the factories in Germany were working overtime to produce weapons and equipment for the front, in the Soviet heartland of Chelyabinsk, exhausted workers were similarly toiling day and night to build up their country’s army. However, their working conditions were incomparable to those in Germany. After all, their country was being invaded, while the German army was fighting on foreign soil.

If the weapons and equipment produced by Germany could have reached the front lines directly without needing transport, then perhaps the Soviet Union would have already lost this crucial war. Fortunately for them, their god-awful transportation environment and infrastructure had saved the country. The war had reached a point where the German army seemed to have been stopped more often by a lack of resources and transport than by Soviet resistance.

Sometimes, being a vast land rich in resources is an advantage that a regional power like Germany could only envy. The Soviet Union was, to this day, still self-sufficient in steel and oil. Although the supply from the Baku oil fields had been cut off, the fuel reserves they had in storage still allowed the Soviets to confidently continue building their tanks.

The only things the Soviet commanders complained about were the low production of the Stalin tank and the fact that the T-34’s performance was gradually becoming mediocre. In the army’s early internal push to accelerate production, most T-34s had been equipped with the simpler, more numerous 76mm gun. But in actual combat, the power of this gun was extremely limited, so the T-34 was now, in practice, assigned to the Stalin tank as cannon fodder, to be used for-screening in combined operations.

In fact, in the original history, the T-34, as a successful design, had been overly mythologized. Most of the time, this tank was just bullying German infantry. The reason it had performed so well in the war was simply that the German armored forces had been too scarce.

These tanks had a powerful operational range, so they could tear open the German defense lines and then quickly outflank and encircle them. Although in the process of attacking, they were often met with a head-on blow from the German elite armored forces, it didn’t matter if they failed a thousand times, because they only needed to succeed once to be enough to collapse the German line.

A typical Soviet tactic was to use T-34 tanks to tear at the German infantry lines, then to break through and outflank… If they were pushed back by the German armored forces, they would just move to another place and try again. As long as they succeeded in their breakthrough and flanking maneuver once, the next step was to use the T-34’s operational range to surround the German infantry and annihilate their effective strength.

However, in the current war situation, the German armored forces were simply too numerous, so numerous that they were already a drag on Germany’s precious crude oil reserves. In that case, the cheap T-34 was no longer much of a threat.

Unlike the German infantry of another timeline, the current German infantry groups had a large number of independent anti-tank battalions and assault gun battalions. The usual role of these infantry armored battalions was to support the infantry in an attack, but in a defensive situation, they were used as self-propelled anti-tank guns. These weapons had inflicted massive casualties on the Soviet tanks and had also made the German infantry positions even more impenetrable.

As long as they could delay for a few dozen minutes, the nearby German armored forces would arrive. A large number of elite Panther, Tiger, and King Tiger tanks would cut in from the flanks and annihilate the Soviet forces that were trying to break through the German positions. And so the exchange had become unbearable for the Soviets: the Germans were using a small number of cheap, Panther-chassis assault guns to trade for a large number of new Soviet T-34 tanks.

And in the data provided by one of Akado’s statistical departments, it showed that for every one assault gun the German army lost, the Soviet army would lose two to three T-34 or KV-1 tanks. And in terms of construction hours and production capacity, one assault gun was only about equal to one T-34 tank.

And so, a matter of panic for all the Soviet high command was finally laid on their table, a problem that the German commanders in another timeline had also faced: the enemy’s armored force was growing larger with every battle! And the more they fought, the higher their quality, and the better their performance!

So naturally, the Soviets were also trying to find ways to solve the various problems their frontline troops were encountering. For example, by distributing large-caliber anti-tank rifles to the infantry units on a large scale, or by reinforcing the armor of the Stalin tank, turning it into the sturdier but slower Stalin-2.

The facts proved that it was not only the Germans who had a huge imagination. After the crisis had arrived, the Soviet engineers and scientists also had their own whimsical inventions: they had reinforced the Stalin tank, widened its tracks, and used a lower-profile turret to create the Stalin-4. It was just that this tank was currently still on the drawing board and could not be produced immediately.

At the same time, there was also the birth of the Soviet rocket-powered anti-aircraft interceptor, a weapon that imitated the German Friedrich rocket launcher, an improved individual firearm similar to the MP-44 assault rifle, and an IL-2 attack aircraft equipped with a new engine, and so on. Unfortunately, because their industrial capacity was on the verge of collapse, most of these weapons, which could have been called classics by later generations, were never truly put into production.

However, the Stalin-2 tank, with its reinforced armor and purely for defensive use, could indeed be put directly into production. The Soviet industrial departments began to frantically produce fixed-turret tanks, similar to the German assault guns, to serve as frontline anti-tank weapons. The turretless Stalin was named the SU-122, and the turretless T-34 was named the SU-76.

It was obvious that these weapons were all named after the caliber of their main guns. Although many things had been simplified, they were still welcomed by the frontline troops. Of course, they were also welcomed by the workers in the rear—the supervisory department only required the production of a certain number of Stalin tanks or T-34s, but they didn’t ask what kind of tanks.

The first batch of 300 SU-122s and SU-76s was sent to the front line, in an attempt to stabilize the crumbling Volga defense line. The Soviet defenders there were in danger of being broken through at any moment, so most of the weapons produced were thrown in there. Unfortunately, the Moscow front had recently become tight, so more than 100 of the tanks that had just been produced were sent to the northern front.

Just thinking about it was enough to make one despair: in the factories in the rear, the Germans were producing the advanced and powerful King Tiger II, while the Soviet workers were working overtime to produce simplified versions of the Stalin and T-34. This was truly a contest of lopsided strength.

“Why were only 90 152mm guns produced this month? Can’t the comrades, for the sake of the motherland, produce just 10 more?” a Soviet officer in charge of allocating the produced weapons asked, looking at the sallow-faced factory manager. The production of large-caliber artillery had not increased at all this month, which was a very strange phenomenon in wartime.

The main reason was actually a problem with the allocation of raw materials. A large batch of steel had been transferred to the tank production department, so the cannon production line here had been shut down for two days. The workers did indeed need a rest. Since January, they had not had a single day off, working day and night to produce more than 400 152mm howitzers for the front.

Unfortunately, their production speed was still not enough to keep up with the rate at which the cannons were being lost at the front: records showed that the frontline Soviet army had had 150 howitzers captured by the Germans, more than 300 destroyed by bombers or scuttled during their own retreat, and more than 50 had been damaged by bore explosions or other malfunctions and were awaiting repair.

“Comrade General, the workers need to rest. The longest any of them has gone without seeing their family is two months…” this factory manager said, looking at the general from the logistics department. He opened his dry lips and said in a mournful voice, “Everyone is only eating two meals a day. If this goes on, something is bound to happen sooner or later!”

It was already June. The Soviet army had lost a large area of its original grain-producing regions: Ukraine and Belarus were now in German hands. A large part of the reserved grain had already been consumed. A food shortage, which would have been impossible before, was now about to break out as the war continued.

Most of the rear areas had begun to implement a rationing system. To prevent unrest, all grain had been taken over by the army. Civilians were only given two meals’ worth of food per day.

“What chaos could happen? That’s just alarmist talk! Comrade! Watch your words!” the general said, reminding the factory manager in a cold voice. He then continued to berate him loudly, “The Germans are already approaching Moscow. The great leader, Comrade Stalin, is setting an example for us, defending Moscow to the death! At a time like this, we should be doing our best to produce weapons as quickly as possible, to support the soldiers at the front! Do you understand?”

What chaos could happen? You just take a look at how many people in the entire rear still have the heart to work overtime… We’re here, killing ourselves to produce weapons and equipment, and the result is we haven’t heard of any decent victories at the front. Zhukov has recaptured a few broken cities, and the radio is still praising him every day. But the Germans have reached Moscow, and no one is talking about it.

Without paying any attention to the factory manager’s sullen silence, the general from logistics allocation was already at his wit’s end over another matter. He had about 30 tanks and more than 100 heavy guns piled up here, but these weapons, because they had no suitable transport, could not be sent to the front line in a short time.

Most of the train cars were transporting people and food. The few that could be squeezed out were all for ammunition. The front line was short of everything, so the limited capacity of the railway simply could not meet the needs of replenishing the losses at the front. To use trucks for transport was even more of a joke. The Soviets themselves were well aware of the terrible road conditions, but the production of trucks also could not keep up with the losses at the front…

This Soviet general, in his helplessness, waved his hand at the factory manager, signaling him to leave. After the factory manager had left, he picked up the phone in front of him. “Have the trucks from the American aid arrived yet? We’re waiting to use them here! Yes! Urge them, we need at least 300… mm… 300 or 400, preferably 500.”

After speaking, he hung up the phone, looked at the goods delivery list that the factory manager had just left, and, with a bitter smile, signed his name on it.

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com