Chapter 789: Bonfire

Akado sat on a lounge chair in the Wolf’s Lair, listlessly poking at the flames in the fireplace. The entire room was as warm as spring. On the table were some exquisite little pastries, their cream glistening and looking incredibly delicious.

On the wall behind him hung a huge map of Europe, with Germany’s occupied territories all clearly marked. The entire Southern Group, commanded by the three fierce generals Model, Guderian, and Manstein, was pressing towards the Soviet Union’s lifeline, the Caucasus. In the central region, the Central Group, under Rundstedt, Vlasov, and Kluge, was also stirring restlessly. In the far north, List and Weichs, who was moving into Finnish territory, were also actively preparing for battle. The entire Eastern Front was now a sea of smoke and fire.

Akado knew that his footsteps had not, in fact, yet reached the furthest point that the German army had reached in another timeline. He had only walked more steadily and faster than the Nazi army under Hitler.

And this time, he was going to go further, more gloriously. What Hitler could not do, he, having summed up the lessons of failure and made more efforts, what kind of outcome would he get? This he very much wanted to know. He had prepared everything, making Germany twice as strong as it had been at the same period in history. But he was, after all, not a god, and he could not see his own future.

“Knock, knock.” Someone knocked on the thick, solid wood door outside. Akado’s hand, holding a long iron poker and poking at the fire, stopped. He turned around. On his SS uniform, the silver ornaments glinted with a white light in the firelight. He looked towards the door and said slowly, “Come in.”

Pushing the door open, Cindra walked to a spot a meter in front of Akado, stood at attention, and raised her arm. “My Führer.”

“Is there any news from Kharkov?” Akado asked, glancing at his personal secretary. “Or has the advance in the south run into some trouble?”

“Reporting to the Führer, a telegram just came in from the Central Group’s Field Marshal von Rundstedt. His right wing, the 1st Ukrainian Army under Marshal Vlasov, has, with the assistance of the Italian and Romanian expeditionary forces, captured the city center of Kharkov.”

At this very moment, in the city center of Kharkov, on the roof of that iconic building, a German national flag, riddled with holes, was flying in the wind. And not far from this building, Soviet and Ukrainian troops were engaged in a fierce battle. They had even engaged in brutal, close-quarters combat with bayonets more than once for control of this city block.

But in any case, Vlasov had planted the German battle flag on the walls of Kharkov. This, from a certain perspective, confirmed that the city of Kharkov had now become a control zone of the Third Reich. Although the street fighting there was still raging, it did not in the slightest affect the fact that the German army was externally proclaiming its occupation of Kharkov.

Akado turned his body slightly and looked at the city of Kharkov on the wall, more than half of which was now in an encirclement. There was no emotion in his eyes. To him now, that city was nothing more than a circle on a map.

He just knew how many soldiers’ lives had been lost for this small circle, in this circle. How many tanks had been destroyed here, how many cars. He was even a little numb to these numbers, because ever since he had personally shot and killed someone, he seemed to have begun to have a callous attitude towards life.

“The losses, read them to me,” Akado said, signaling Cindra to open the file in her hand. He then continued to poke at the charcoal in the fireplace beside him with the thing in his hand.

“The 1st Ukrainian Army has lost over 90,000 men. The Romanian expeditionary force has lost 1,700 men. Italy… Italy has lost 149 men in battle,” Cindra reported slowly. “In this battle, a total of 111,700 Soviet troops were annihilated. 410 cannons were captured… and approximately 39,000 men were taken prisoner.”

“…” Akado did not speak, just sat there poking at the bonfire in the fireplace with the iron poker in his hand. He was silent, and Cindra had no reason to continue speaking, so the entire office suddenly fell into a heavy silence.

More than 200,000 men had fought in a city for nearly a month, turning it into a pile of rubble. Was this a victory worth celebrating? Was this a tragedy worth grieving for? Akado didn’t know how to describe it. He just didn’t know what kind of expression to put on in the face of such an evenly matched slaughter.

“Allocate 1,000 tents to the 1st Ukrainian Army, 10,000 sets of winter cotton uniforms… find some equipment that the other army groups don’t want, and send as much as you can over,” Akado finally spoke after a long silence, breaking the oppressive atmosphere in the room.

“Yes! My Führer!” Cindra turned and walked out. Anna happened to be passing by the door with a coffee pot. The Führer’s personal secretary and his work secretary thus brushed past each other.

Anna entered the room, and the guard outside the door closed it with his hand. Akado did not look at Anna but stared at Kharkov on the map. He finally spoke slowly, “Anna… tell me, am I a cold-hearted person?”

Anna was taken aback, her hand holding the coffee pot stopped. She looked at Akado and asked, tilting her head, “My dear, why do you ask?”

“Kharkov is ours now. That’s all that’s in my head,” Akado said, pointing to his head as he answered Anna’s question. “Over 200,000 men from both sides have died there, but I don’t feel a shred of sorrow. My head is just filled with the thought, ‘Kharkov is ours’.”

“Kharkov is ours. That’s what you should be thinking about,” Anna said, looking at Akado, not knowing what was making her beloved Führer feel so sentimental. As she continued to pour the coffee, she said, “You are the Führer. The things you think about should be such big matters. As for how many people have died on the battlefield, how many replacements are needed, and how many more people need to die, shouldn’t those be things for the generals to think about?”

Yes, what the Führer should be thinking about, isn’t it just some cold and ruthless situations, and those cold numbers that describe death? Akado looked at the bonfire in the fireplace and felt the warm air surrounding him. In the cold winter, it was a very happy thing.

He took the coffee that Anna handed him, took a small sip, and let the warm liquid linger in his stomach. Then he smiled, a smile of some relief. Since I started this war, then even if my sins are towering, I should not regret my original choice. If I had really come to bring world peace, then at that moment in 1918, I should have killed Hitler and become the savior of the world. At that time, I did not consider myself a saint, so now I am even less of a saint.

“Even if I walk further and further down the path of a demon, I am still me,” Akado murmured. He then closed his eyes and began to slowly savor the bitterness of the coffee in his mouth.

At least he still had a warm room, a dancing charcoal fire in the fireplace, a comfortable rocking chair, and a beautiful and sexy woman. In the southern region of the Eastern Front, in Russia, on a cold night, there was also a burning, dancing bonfire. And by this bonfire, a Tiger tank with mottled impact marks was parked.

The white paint on this Tiger tank had, due to the battle and various other reasons, turned a faint grayish-white. On its turret, there was a partially covered number—13. Sitting by the bonfire was the Rein Hardt tank crew, who were on their way to advance south and had been ordered to stop and rest.

Rein sat alone on the tank, holding his MP-44 assault rifle. His cold eyes looked even sharper and colder in the cold wind. He stared into the distance, as if thinking about something, completely ignoring Bruce and Markus, who had come over to gossip, who were excitedly talking about the rumors they had heard.

“I hear that Wittmann, in the central region, has taken down another 21 tanks. Damn it, we’re falling further and further behind him on this road,” Markus said, sneering. He stirred the watered-down potato powder in his aluminum mess tin with a spoon and complained to Andre and Bruce.

Bruce couldn’t sit still when he heard this. In the past, after coming to the Eastern Front, the gap in the kill records between their crew and Wittmann’s was shrinking bit by bit. This had made them think that it wouldn’t be long before they could reclaim the honor of the number one ace in the armored forces. But now the gap between them was getting wider and wider.

“Who knows why the damn Soviets have moved all their tanks to the central region… If I had known, we should have been in the middle… Hi… I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore,” Bruce said, stomping his foot in regret, his words a little incoherent.

“Rein! Didn’t you say you wanted to play a game of kill records? Why are you not in a hurry at all now?” Markus asked, looking at Rein on the tank in a not-so-loud voice.

Normally, Rein, who was thinking about something, shouldn’t have heard Markus’s voice, but he still reacted immediately. “I originally thought Wolf was dead, so I was more interested in the kill records… Now, he’s still alive, so as long as I kill him, nothing else matters.”

Yes, nothing else mattered. Rein brought his gaze back from the distance and looked at the bright bonfire. Not far away, some troops were marching through the night under the firelight. The entire German army in the southern region was advancing towards the Caucasus. Their speed was even faster than that of the Soviet Red Army that was rushing here to provide support.

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