Chapter 451: The Eastern Front
“We must maintain a defensive posture on the Eastern Front. I am very clear on the state of the Soviet Union’s war preparations, but the Führer’s order is to adhere to a strategy of strategic defense,” General List said into the phone, giving orders to a division commander.
After hanging up, he looked at General Kluge sitting beside him, gave a wry smile, and picked up his teacup. “Kluge, I really don’t know why we are missing such a golden opportunity. Our soldiers are ready, a full 2.3 million men are massed on the Eastern Front, yet we have to wait for the Soviets to make the first move.”
“The Führer has ordered us to wait, so my troops will wait,” Kluge replied with a smile. “Even if Moscow were right in front of us, as long as I received the Führer’s order, my troops would halt and wait.”
Compared to General List, Kluge’s command ability was not outstanding. To put it bluntly, Kluge, like Raeder, was assigned to the Eastern Front for one reason only: his reassuring loyalty. The reason Akado was happy to entrust his army to Kluge was simply that Kluge would never do anything superfluous.
Some generals were prone to altering operational orders on their own initiative. They were gifted and had a strong ability to seize tactical opportunities. Their reason for disobeying orders was that it could lead to victory. These generals were the more formidable “geniuses,” and Akado gave them the freedom to act as they saw fit. Examples included Dönitz, Guderian, and Rommel. Some were steady and experienced, unmovable as a mountain, the traditional German military leaders. These men were reliable to use, and their results were solid, if predictable. Examples included Rundstedt, List, and Keitel. Then there were those who were capable but difficult to work with, who could only be used as a last resort for various reasons, such as Brauchitsch and von Bock. And of course, there was another category of men who were uncomfortable to use, whose loyalty was questionable, and who had been almost completely purged by the Führer…
And the final category of German generals was composed of men like Raeder and Kluge. They were personally loyal to Akado, but their command ability needed improvement. Akado liked to use such generals because they faithfully executed his orders, which, under Akado’s precise “predictions,” often led to surprisingly stunning results.
Therefore, as the supreme commander on the Eastern Front, Akado chose the moderate Kluge, not the more capable List or Model. And Kluge did his utmost to restrain generals like List, single-mindedly strengthening the Eastern Front’s defensive system, waiting for the Soviets to launch a “surprise” attack one morning.
At this moment, the various army groups on the Eastern Front were doing everything they could to complete the defensive lines in their sectors. This time, Germany was well-prepared for a Soviet attack. To cope with a possible large-scale Soviet offensive, Akado had preemptively introduced the theory of defense in depth, preparing a full 15 defensive lines for the Soviets in the Polish region.
With millions of men idle, besides training and leave, the rest of their time was spent digging trenches alongside the laborers from the Polish concentration camps. Although these 15 defensive lines were not massive, permanent fortifications, they were more than sufficient to deal with the Soviet Red Army, which held no advantage in either firepower or mobility.
These defensive works were arranged in the shape of gear teeth, or perhaps like the crenellations on the Great Wall. Some strong defensive lines protruded forward, with their flanks also carefully constructed. Once the Soviets began their attack, they would find that some sectors were easy to break through, while in others they could not advance a single step.
Behind these protruding defensive positions were elite German infantry and panzer units. Once the Soviets entered the concave parts of these “toothed” positions, they would have walked straight into a carefully laid trap. The German defenders, with the cooperation of their panzer forces and the air force, would seal these pockets and annihilate the Soviet “invaders” inside.
The German High Command had conducted countless war games and assessments of this deep defensive system. Generals like Brauchitsch conservatively estimated that the Soviets would need 1.5 million men to fill the first 10 defensive lines. The more optimistic generals believed that this defensive line could chew up 2 million Soviet soldiers without any problem. As for the price Germany would have to pay, the predictions were relatively consistent: only about 200,000 to 300,000 casualties.
However, once the German-Soviet war began in earnest, behind the 2.3 million regular troops on the German border, there were about 700,000 reserves. The comparison of forces on the front line was not a simple 3 million versus 5 million, but a total of 5 million German, Romanian, Italian, and French troops against the Soviets’ 5 million—with Germany holding an absolute advantage in armor and air power.
If one included the potential contribution of at least 700,000 regular troops from their potential ally, Turkey, as well as the forces that countries like Finland and Ireland might provide, the Axis powers might even have a numerical advantage. Just how great that advantage would be would depend on how well the German strike forces performed on the main front.
In fact, the Soviets had not been idle these past few days. They were actively moving troops and preparing to “spread the red flame across Europe.” Millions of Stalin’s followers had taken up arms, been equipped as the Soviet Red Army, and were preparing for a world-shaking war with Germany, the source of all evil. For this war, the Soviet Union had prepared a full 5 million regular troops. These were not the soft persimmons of the Soviet attack on Poland; they were a strengthened, genuine Red Army. In terms of armored strength, they were not even inferior to the arrogant Germans, and in some local areas, they even had an advantage.
Having summarized the experiences of various countries over the past two years, the Soviet leader, Stalin, placed even more importance on the development of armored forces than the United States. Soviet engineers had improved the T-26 tank, strengthening its frontal armor. Of course, besides the T-26, which had already suffered at the hands of the Germans, the Soviets’ true trump card was a full 2,500 KV-1 heavy tanks.
With 5,000 tanks on the German-Soviet border, the Soviet military had reason to believe that their forces could break through the German lines. Stalin and Khrushchev were both full of confidence about a surprise attack on Germany. They felt they had victory in their grasp; Stalin had even already appointed the mayors and party secretaries for Warsaw and Berlin.
And some Soviet generals who were familiar with the German army were also very optimistic about this operation. For example, Zhukov, who was now the deputy commander of the Soviet forces in the Far East, was full of confidence about attacking Germany. After studying the German army’s fighting style, he had put forward the view that the German army had an insufficient number of artillery pieces.
Zhukov had accurately identified this weakness in German artillery numbers and had also proposed his own view of the war: the German army was constantly advancing during its offensives, which meant they were always on the move. Therefore, they favored flexible, small-caliber artillery. As a result, they were not good at defensive warfare. In a defensive battle, they would lack artillery support and would collapse faster than other opponents.
This was not just his view, but the view of many Soviet generals. So the prevailing argument in the Soviet high command was: “Instead of waiting for the Germans to attack, it is better for us to concentrate our forces and strike first. This way, the Germans will be forced to defend, and we will have the advantage.”
At this point, it is necessary to briefly introduce the differences in detail between the Soviet army and the armies of other countries.
The Soviet Union was in the habit of mothballing obsolete weapons, storing them away with dedicated personnel for maintenance. Although these weapons were, to a certain extent, outdated, they were still real, usable equipment.
In peacetime, every mainline division in the Soviet army had one division commander and two deputy division commanders. By the same token, every regiment had two deputy commanders, every battalion had two deputy commanders, every company had two deputy commanders, and every platoon had two deputy platoon leaders…
Once the Soviet Union entered a state of war, and this mainline division was ordered to the front, one deputy division commander, two or three deputy regimental commanders, four or six deputy battalion commanders, a dozen or so deputy company commanders, and hundreds of deputy NCOs would be left behind. Now, everyone should understand: this was the skeleton of almost another entire division.
Of course, in terms of combat effectiveness, this “shadow division” that was left behind was certainly not as good as the mainline division that had departed. But once it was filled with manpower, it was indeed a division, a new unit capable of fighting.
This new unit was composed of reservists and retired soldiers and was issued the old, outdated equipment. This old equipment was exactly what the reservists and retired soldiers were familiar with, so this division from five, or even ten, years ago could immediately become combat-effective and be quickly thrown into the front lines.
This is why, in another timeline, after Germany had annihilated 3 million Soviet troops in one go, the Soviet front line still maintained a strength of over 3 million. This is the “secret” to why the Soviet forces seemed endless.
And just as in that other timeline, German spies had not uncovered this simple little secret. They faithfully reported the intelligence they had worked so hard to gather to the German High Command: the intelligence indicated that the Soviet forces had about 370 divisions, with a total strength of about 5 to 6 million men. But Akado, who knew the true strength of the Soviet Union, was well aware that their real combat strength was around 10 million—provided they had enough weapons and equipment to arm these soldiers.
Compared to Hitler, Akado and the current German generals had an invisible advantage. This advantage was that the supplies from Britain and the United States would not be as plentiful as they had been in 1942 in that other timeline. Britain was now unable to fend for itself and did not have that many resources to provide to the Red Army. So whether the Soviets could get American aid, and how much they could get, was hard to say—but Akado knew that it would certainly not be more.
Published: 2025-08-26T05:05:00.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-11-14T10:57:48.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c451-eastern-137361390
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