Chapter 718: Turning Point

Germany, the Führer’s secret headquarters in the suburbs of Warsaw, the Wolf’s Lair.

Akado was sitting on the sofa, face to face with four old gentlemen in suits and a group of middle-aged men in white lab coats. These were all staff from the Imperial War Meteorological Forecasting Agency, responsible for weather forecasting for the entire Eastern Front. Among them sat the actual commander-in-chief of the German Air Force, General Kesselring, and the general in charge of the bomber force, Dick. They were all here to attend this meeting to confirm the future weather situation. Recently, such meetings had been held every day to report the latest measurement results.

“Are you sure your forecast is accurate?” Akado broke the oppressive silence that had been hanging over the room. No one dared to speak before he did, so everyone just waited. This was the authority that power brought. Even an academic authority could not show the slightest bit of unruliness in front of the actual controller of the Empire.

One of the old men answered Akado’s question, his tone sounding very helpless, “My Führer, although we have already received weather conditions from afar through dispatched aircraft and submarines, meteorological analysis for many years has been unable to accurately predict the exact time of the end of a snowfall. We cannot confirm when this period of bad weather will last.”

“My Führer, the results of the meteorological analysis show that at the latest, tomorrow morning, there will be a short period of clear weather, clear enough for planes to take off,” a young meteorologist stood up and said softly to Akado.

“Can you be sure?” Akado asked, looking at the rather young meteorologist with a faint smile. He had been asking this same question recently. Every morning, the German meteorological staff had to measure the snowfall and cloud cover to combine with other data to predict the future weather trend.

In response to Akado’s constant questioning, these German meteorological researchers, who had to summarize their measurement results and repeat their previous words every day, had to give the same answer again. If the person sitting opposite them was not the Führer of the Empire, Akado, they would probably have lost their patience and attacked him by now.

“Yes, my Führer. I have sorted and analyzed the data, and compared it with the meteorological records of a full 100 years to reach this conclusion. Bad weather in Ukraine generally does not last long. A climate like this can only be maintained for a few days. Even if it continues to snow, there will be a short period of clear weather,” the meteorologist said with certainty.

“Very good! Once the clear weather appears, our air force can take off its fighters and let the Soviets know who is in control of the sky here!” Akado said with a nod. From the very beginning, he had been waiting for the moment when the weather would clear. At that time, the thousands of fighter planes he had prepared could take off to attack the Soviet ground forces, and List’s pressure would be relieved countless times over.

Once the German fighters and bombers appeared in the skies of the war zone, the Soviet Union’s proud numerical advantage in tanks would be more than half offset by the German Air Force. The concentrated use of tanks would be bombed and attacked by the German Air Force. At that time, the Soviet offensive would be further delayed, and the German army’s chances of victory would be even greater.

“My Führer, if the weather clears, I will arrange for all frontline fighters to take off at the first opportunity to destroy all Soviet targets that dare to take to the skies. More than half of the fighters will also be armed with small bombs to attack the enemy’s ground targets!” Kesselring stood up, walked to the map, and, pointing to the dozens of frontline airfields marked on it, introduced his battle plan: “At that time, 1,500 fighters will take off simultaneously to control the entire combat airspace.”

“My Führer! The bombers will all be sortied at the same time, including 400 Do-217 bombers, 300 Stuka dive bombers, 300 Stuka II dive bombers, and 510 Butcher bombers. They will bomb all Soviet transportation hubs, including Minsk, as well as the assembling frontline Soviet troops,” General Dick, who was in charge of the German bomber force, also spoke, introducing the specific implementation of the operation.

The entire German Air Force, when conditions allowed, would simultaneously dispatch fighter and bomber formations, with nearly 3,000 aircraft taking off in the first wave. Subsequent attacks would exceed 15,000 sorties, with the aim of completely paralyzing the logistical support of the frontline Soviet troops and preventing them from continuing their southward attack on List’s Army Group E.

As Akado listened to his generals report on the attack plan that the air force would carry out once the weather improved, he squinted his eyes. These plans all sounded very good, but the snowflakes were still falling… The question now was: when would the snow stop?

While Akado was worrying about the weather, in Korosten, north of Kiev, on the front line of the German-Soviet defense, a German soldier was finishing off a Soviet Red Army soldier with a bayoneted Mauser 98k rifle. His bayonet had entered under the other’s ribs and into his heart. Blood flowed out along the groove, staining the Soviet soldier’s chest red.

This Soviet soldier did not look very old, only about seventeen or eighteen. He gripped the bayonet that had pierced his body with both hands, his face filled with pain and unwillingness. But his struggles grew weaker with the passing of time, and soon, a living soul became a cold corpse in the falling snow.

Further away, a German soldier, holding his MP-44 assault rifle, pulled the trigger and began his strafing. Bullets flew towards the Soviet soldiers opposite, cutting down one after another of these fearless men. The battlefield suddenly fell silent. Unknowingly, another Soviet attack had been repulsed, and another cruel test had come to an end.

A German soldier, exhausted, sat down on the ground, panting heavily. The air he exhaled formed a white mist in the cold, proving that he had just engaged in very strenuous activity. And beside this soldier, two German machine gunners were struggling to change the barrel of their machine gun.

The rapid firing had made the machine gun barrel red-hot. One of them held the body of the machine gun while the other carefully removed the barrel. Then, from a spare barrel bag, he took out a new barrel and installed it on the machine gun that had already rendered countless meritorious services. Not far in front of this machine gun lay the bodies of at least 30 Soviet soldiers.

By this point in the battle, all the German soldiers had become accustomed to this kind of unprecedentedly brutal slaughter. They now knew that the battles in Poland and France were almost like a game. Now, their real test had begun—now, the true face of war was revealed.

More than 50,000 German soldiers, whether new recruits or veterans, whether elite or miscellaneous, had fallen on the road from Kalinkavichy all the way back to the outskirts of Korosten. In one day, there had been hundreds of battles, large and small. The entire German-Soviet front was a huge meat grinder.

Soviet tanks were burning everywhere, and German soldiers were lying on the roads, being trampled over by Soviet soldiers. One unit after another was routed by the Soviets. The troops under List’s command were being squeezed dry, little by little. In the end, even the reserves were pitifully small. He could only use a retreat to gather his troops and consolidate his defense line.

“Company commander! The Soviets have retreated! They are assembling on the other side of the highway. They might be preparing for a larger-scale attack!” a soldier reported, running up to the company commander, who was collecting ammunition from the corpses, with his Mauser 98k rifle in hand, panting.

“Got it! Go and get all the bullets from our fallen brothers! Don’t waste them!” This company commander had become accustomed to no longer waiting for the logistics department to resupply ammunition. In the face of the large-scale Soviet offensive, everyone needed to conserve their ammunition as much as possible and collect as much as possible to ensure that they would have enough bullets for the next battle, to protect themselves.

Not far away, an assault gun was slowly driving into a newly dug defensive position. This big fellow had just been sent over from regimental headquarters and was the entire company’s support unit. Although they had applied for a company of infantry plus three tanks, the fact that the regiment could find such an assault gun and send it to them was already considered extremely “decent.”

“Find a machine gun! Cover the flank of this assault gun. Set up a crossfire defense to wipe out the infantry in the next Soviet attack as much as possible. Leave the tanks to that big guy, understand?” The company commander looked at the Panther assault gun that had driven into the shelter, with only a low section of its top exposed, and instructed this soldier.

“Yes, Company Commander! But the weather seems to be a little brighter than before. The dark clouds seem to be thinning,” the German soldier said, squinting his eyes and looking up at the sky above.

Extending his hand, he found that there were no tiny snowflakes slowly drifting down. The company commander was taken aback for a moment, then also looked up. He saw a relatively clear sky. Although there were many clouds, he could see the delightful azure blue above them.

The company commander was taken aback for a moment, then looked at the burning tank wrecks on the battlefield, at the soldiers who had just died in battle, lying on the snow, at the corpses in the distance that were mostly covered by snow. He then looked up again in disbelief at the sky he seemed to have not paid attention to for a long time. There were really no more snowflakes falling. Apart from the cold wind, there were none of those despairing snowflakes.

Then he withdrew his gaze and muttered softly, in a voice so low only he could hear, “The snow… has stopped!”

Published: 2025-09-21T03:36:07.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2026-03-08T18:26:50.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c718-turning-139373313

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com