Chapter 538: Retreat

On the Eastern Front, on the positions of the 44th Infantry Division, there was a scene of bustling activity. German soldiers were packing their belongings. They had received orders for a general retreat to the area west of the Dnieper River to set up a defense.

Although their current position was only a few dozen kilometers from Kharkiv, they were still faithfully executing the orders from above, preparing to leave this dangerous position before the Soviet troops opposite them could counter-attack.

“Hurry up! Faster!” a German officer shouted from a truck, watching his busy men move various munitions. The German infantry divisions were not as mechanized as the panzer divisions; in most cases, they still had to solve problems with manpower.

For example, right now, the infantrymen of the 44th were helping the divisional artillery move large-caliber shells. These howitzers had been brought from France. Although they were indeed somewhat outdated now, these big guns, to a certain extent, made up for the German army’s current embarrassing lack of large-caliber artillery.

Many of the German artillery units were now using the cannons of other countries, including French howitzers, and howitzers from the Netherlands and Belgium. These cannons had thrown the German artillery’s logistics into chaos, but they had to be used.

The life of a German infantryman now was not as good as one might imagine. These soldiers followed behind the panzer forces, with only tedious marching every day, and they were also responsible for transporting many other military supplies.

“Pile those tents on the horse carts! Yes, pile them up! Secure them with ropes, don’t let them fall off halfway!” a company commander from the baggage train was having his soldiers load the camping tents onto horse-drawn carts. For the infantry, vehicles like trucks were still too much of a luxury. Only the main mechanized regiment within the division was partially equipped with them.

Most of the units were still using primitive equipment like warhorses, and some units even had donkeys. Relying on these animals to pull the carts, they completed most of the last-mile transport of the German army’s supplies. Do not underestimate these horse- and mule-drawn carts; they could be said to be the most reliable “Mercedes-Benzes” of the German transport corps.

The German tanks sped like lightning, fighting their way forward. On the roads behind them, the German infantry could only use their own two legs to constantly chase after them. These soldiers, carrying their rifles and wearing jackboots, trudged through the muddy ground. They had to give way to the trucks, so in most cases, they could only trudge along the sides of the highway.

Unlike the panzer forces, who could pile their baggage on their vehicles, they had to carry most of their own baggage. This included raincoats, entrenching tools, gas masks, ammunition, and a change of socks and underwear. To march across a vast plain with a pile of junk was definitely not an easy task, so more soldiers were accustomed to discarding some of the less important items to lighten their load.

To reduce this waste, the units had no choice but to have horse-drawn carts accompany the soldiers. Each company was equipped with one cart to carry tents, entrenching tools, and other supplies. Later, this method gradually became popular, and every horse cart in the infantry was also required to help the artillery units of their respective units transport a few shells, which was also a way to compensate for the disaster that the chaotic variety of shell types had brought to the logistical supply.

“What a fucking mess. One order from above, and we’re retreating?” a veteran with a G43 rifle slung over his back and a cigarette dangling from his lips cursed. “How long did it take us to get to this position, working our asses off? Those noble gentlemen say one word, and we have to walk for several days.”

Another young soldier, while laughing and stacking a box of machine-gun ammunition onto a nearby cart, nodded. “Isn’t that the truth? It took us ten days to get here, and then we spent several more days digging trenches. And with one order, we’re walking back to where we started a few days ago. What a waste of time.”

Following the order, the long column of infantry began to set off. A few trucks rumbled past on the dirt road, kicking up a cloud of dust, and amidst the curses of the German soldiers, drove towards the distant end of the highway. More infantry were scattered on both sides of the road, walking in groups of three or five in the direction they had come from.

Some soldiers sat around the horse carts. Because of the several days of fighting, their ammunition and supplies had been considerably depleted, so there were empty carts, which were being used to transport the wounded. Of course, some of the more thick-skinned soldiers also squeezed on, holding several rifles and laughing as they watched their comrades march.

The soldiers around them had placed their weapons on the carts, so their hands were empty. But they were still carrying heavy packs, struggling to march along the sides of the road. For them, this war seemed to have little to do with fighting. Apart from marching, all they did was march.

“The 44th Division is retreating. They are the unit closest to Kharkiv. The Soviet troops are not in pursuit. They seem not to have expected our troops to withdraw at this time,” a staff officer said, handing a document from the front to Guderian. His own troops were retreating from the vicinity of Kharkiv, giving up many of the occupied areas of Ukraine.

According to the operational deployment requirements of the General Staff, his Army Group G had to withdraw its extended tentacles and deploy defensive positions along the Dnieper River to shorten the defensive front. Although such a decision meant giving up about a third of the Ukrainian territory, it would allow them to steadily deploy their forces along the river and conserve their limited manpower.

“Our forces in Belarus are also contracting, giving up their positions near Minsk. The Soviet troops are also not in pursuit. The defensive counter-attack in Poland has beaten the spirit out of the Soviets. They won’t be launching any proactive counter-attacks in the short term,” Guderian said with a nod. He had every reason to believe that the Soviet forces would not be conducting any counter-offensive operations for the time being.

No general, after suffering the loss of over two million soldiers in a short period, would launch a counter-attack when the enemy was voluntarily retreating. What if it was another trap set by the Germans? The Soviet Union would be completely doomed. The German army needed time to recover its strength, and it was clear that the Soviets also needed time to heal the wounds that the war had inflicted on them.

The large-scale elastic defensive positions that the German army had set up in Poland, and the subsequent pre-emptive ambush and counter-attack tactics, had left too many nightmares for the Soviet generals. Many Soviet soldiers felt a chill run down their spines when they remembered the painful process of being routed for several hundred kilometers from eastern Poland. The German panzer forces’ surprise attacks and flanking maneuvers, all the way to the encirclement of Kiev, could be described as a classic defensive counter-attack tactic. The whole process could be taken directly and written into a military textbook.

In the more than one month of the entire Eastern Front, the German soldiers, at the cost of 110,000 killed and 280,000 wounded, had killed 700,000 Soviet soldiers and had also captured 1.5 million, which was almost half of the Soviet forces deployed in the west. This glorious victory had encouraged the German military. Some generals had even begun to discuss in private that the Führer’s war strategy against the Soviet Union was too conservative, that Germany was fully capable of capturing the Soviet capital of Moscow before the winter arrived.

This voice was deliberately ignored by the Führer. The guiding principle of the German High Command had always been the “New Barbarossa” plan drawn up by Manstein, completely ignoring the military’s suggestions for a large-scale invasion of the Soviet Union.

Berlin, the Führer’s residence. Akado looked at the increasingly frail August, his heart filled with a sense of urgency. “Chancellor, I know that those generals are constantly whispering in your ear about expanding the scale of the war on the Eastern Front. But, you know our plan. We are indeed not ready to invade the Soviet Union.”

Germany was indeed not ready to enter a total war. Although the war on the Western Front seemed to have achieved a glorious victory, there was one problem: the entire war had been won by Germany too quickly, which meant that the amount of supplies that had been gradually stockpiled during the war was actually very limited.

For example, the German army lacked winter clothing. The German high command had been working hard to solve this problem. The officers of the logistics department had been doing everything they could to stockpile cotton and turn it into winter clothing to be transported to the western region of Ukraine, but it was still not enough to meet the needs of the massive number of Wehrmacht soldiers.

Don’t think that preparing winter clothes for an army of 3.5 million is an easy matter. Everyone has received their school uniforms in school; that’s an engineering project for distributing clothes to a battalion of 500 people. If this scale were to be expanded by nearly ten thousand times, over a region hundreds of kilometers wide, would anyone still think it was an excessive thing to give the head of the logistics department the rank of a full general?

For a large army to winter in the field is absolutely a matter that tests the logistics. The German army had not yet established a complete logistical supply and support system in the Soviet Union. If they were to attack all the way east to Moscow, they would be gambling with the elite forces of Germany. And Akado himself knew that it was most likely a gamble that would be a complete loss.

To lengthen one’s own supply lines while shortening the opponent’s when one is not sure of victory is something only a fool would do. To attack all the way is to continuously lengthen the distance between one’s own troops and the rear. The withdrawal of the wounded, the replenishment of personnel, the transport of supplies, and the repair of weapons and equipment would all become more and more difficult. The gates of Moscow would be the end, not the end of victory, but the final station on the road to hell for the army.

“I know the Führer’s meaning,” August said with a nod. The toil of the past year had taken a toll on his body. Although the medical care in Berlin could be said to be the best in the world, it still could not stop this Chancellor from aging. “So I have recalled Brauchitsch and the others to hold a meeting in Berlin to analyze the situation on the Eastern Front. This way, the military people will know that they are far from ready for a massive war.”

August was somewhat wistful. Not even Akado knew what he was thinking. In fact, what he was lamenting in his heart was why, back in 1914, Germany did not have a figure like Akado who could see the situation clearly. If there had been such a person at that time, Germany might have gone much further…

Published: 2025-09-03T02:41:50.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-16T17:13:12.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c538-retreat-137999951

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