Chapter 837: Where is the End?

The air was still just as dry. As winter was about to depart, it seemed there was no intention of rain in the entire territory of Russia. But the roads here had turned to mud from the melting snow, and another factor seemed to have been added to hinder the speed of the German advance: infuriating mud and potholes.

The state of the German army on the front line was still quite good. At least the two main German forces in the south and center had now entered a state of stagnation. The forces of Rundstedt and Kluge had stopped their advance after encircling Smolensk, and the German army in the south, after advancing to the Volga River basin and threatening Stalingrad, had not attacked further.

But this did not mean that the muddy roads had not caused trouble for the German army. The long supply lines made the German logistics troops miserable. They had to struggle with the mud and the broken roads to deliver the various supplies needed by the front line to the combat units on time.

This was a war without the smoke of gunpowder, a vast and complex project that was even more soul-crushing than the fighting at the front. The German logistics troops were even more numerous than the frontline combat units. They fought desperately against all sorts of unfavorable factors. Apart from safety, they had no other advantages over the frontline combat units.

“Slowly! Slower! Do you know how expensive this equipment is!” a German railway soldier was directing a locomotive pushing a flatcar full of rails, advancing along the railway that was being repaired bit by bit. On both sides of him was a group of German sappers, as well as some conscripted Ukrainian civilians. These men were unloading a section of rail from the flatcar and fixing it to the sleepers in the prescribed position.

Further ahead were a dozen or so large trucks, piled high with new sleepers. Some soldiers and civilians were working with great enthusiasm, mixing these new sleepers with the old, original ones on this railway, and then arranging them one after another in a mixed pattern, turning it into a railway with a density that met European standards.

Due to historical reasons, the railway tracks in Ukraine and Belarus were actually divided into three different standards: the European standard gauge implemented by Germany, the backward and ancient narrow gauge, and some were the Soviet standard broad gauge. Although the railways that Germany had helped to build were all of European standard, in Ukraine and Belarus, they barely accounted for about half of the total.

The remaining tracks needed to be converted, but building a railway was no easy task. At least, building a railway during wartime was an extremely resource-intensive matter. Hundreds of thousands of tons of steel had to be turned into rails, not tanks. For the German army, which was short on both production capacity and resources, this was an extremely painful thing.

Clang! A section of rail was accurately placed on the sleepers by dozens of civilians and soldiers. On the other side, other soldiers and civilians were slowly placing another section. The construction site was a scene of intense activity. Further in the distance, some German technicians with measuring instruments were discussing how to improve some of the uneven sections and the problem of laying more parallel railway lines.

The German sappers fixed the position of the rails and sleepers, and then began to drive in the railway spikes. The speed of construction, if judged by normal standards, was already very fast. But this almost frantic pace of railway reconstruction was still not enough to meet the needs of the German advance.

“I hear the repair work over there is going quite fast, and they’re basically able to maintain smooth transport,” an officer from the engineering department said, standing on a hillside not far away with his hands behind his back. Beside him were an SS officer responsible for the security of the railway laying troops, and an official from the local pro-German government in Belarus.

“There aren’t many railways in the Soviet Union that meet the standards of the Third Reich. These railways were also the main targets for destruction when the Red Army was retreating,” the SS guard officer said, looking at the railway construction that was advancing at a visible speed in the distance. “Under the protection of the SS soldiers, the work of repairing these railways is going relatively smoothly, but it is not enough to meet the needs of the frontline troops.”

The commander of the sapper unit gave a cold laugh. After all, with the rank of colonel on his shoulder, he was already a genuine high-ranking officer among the frontline commanders in the logistics units. “The front line, whether it’s the officers or the soldiers, they’ve never been satisfied. You send them fuel, they’re short on food. You send them food, they’re short on ammunition. After you send them ammunition, they’ve burned all the fuel.”

The SS officer nodded in agreement with his temporary superior. “Yes, but they are indeed advancing quickly. The furthest unit now is less than 30 kilometers from Stalingrad. And I hear that because they used special forces and helicopters for a faster advance, the railway line there is still in relatively good condition, which is even more remarkable.”

In fact, the railway in the south, due to the period of German-Soviet cooperation, was the best in the Soviet Union. There were several railways there that were entirely built by the Germans, and also had more complete supporting facilities. Apart from some that had been destroyed by the Soviets during their retreat, most of the railways had become resources that the German army could use right away.

But there were two sides to the coin. On the one hand, because of the Caucasian oil fields in the south, the construction during the German-Soviet honeymoon period was the best. On the other hand, it was precisely because the Caucasian oil fields were too important to the German army that Germany had committed a full four army groups, intending to open a new front in the Caucasus.

But the four German army groups put a greater pressure on logistics than originally estimated. At least for now, these hard-won railways were only enough to supply these army groups with about half of their required supplies.

In the central region, Rundstedt’s Army Group A and Kluge’s Army Group F had fewer troops, but after they had passed Minsk, there were no more usable railways. Although they had captured several Soviet trains near Orsha to transship supplies, it was still a drop in the bucket.

The German army lacked tanker cars for transporting fuel. This equipment was high-end and not even plentiful in the homeland. It was difficult to replenish production in a short period of time, and similar Soviet equipment was in the rear. Since the beginning of the German-Soviet war, only a small amount had been captured by the German army. Broad-gauge tanker cars were even rarer. To this day, the German army had only managed to scrape together one broad-gauge tanker train to support the operations of Army Group A.

“Have the soldiers work a little harder! Complaining is complaining, at least we who are working don’t have to risk our lives, do we?” the sapper colonel said to his adjutant behind him. “Get this railway laid to Orsha as soon as possible. That way, we can save a lot of transport capacity.”

“Report!” The sapper colonel’s ambitions had not yet begun when someone came to pour cold water on them. A signals runner walked up the slope, panting as he reported a not-so-good piece of news. “Colonel, news just came in. A group of Soviet partisans attacked a section of our railway in Belarus. A military train was destroyed. We lost more than 40 men and about 4 tons of grain.”

“Where are the nearby SS patrol units? What are they eating for a living?” the SS officer in charge of railway security asked with a frown.

“The SS arrived afterward and rescued the remaining supplies. They put out the fire started by the Soviets and annihilated the Soviets who had attacked the train. But two of the cars had already been burned down, and there was nothing they could do,” the signals runner said, looking at the contents of the telegram and answering the other officer’s question.

Everyone felt the pressure of the war. Man-made destruction made many problems more complicated. The Germans’ specialty, precision scheduling, had turned into a disaster in train transport. They relied on a dense and well-calculated train schedule to maximize the efficiency of the railway lines in their hands. But once a problem occurred at a certain node, it would often lead to a large-scale paralysis of railway transport.

In the German homeland, the transport of supplies from the Western Front to the Eastern Front could be carried out at an astonishing speed. The efficiency of the main railway lines was maximized. But after a train entered Poland and then reached Minsk, its speed would be halved. Further east, from Minsk to the vicinity of Smolensk, the speed would be reduced by another three times.

Just a slowdown, perhaps the German army could still endure. But the increase in transport costs was what really made the German army feel on the verge of collapse. Often, by the time a barrel of fuel was transported to the very front of the Eastern Front, it meant that another barrel of fuel had been consumed on the way. This was what the German army, which was short on supplies, was most dissatisfied with.

“The Führer has already decided to set up supply depots in some places in Poland and Belarus. At least in the next few months, we will be committed to improving the conditions for transporting supplies in the rear and to cracking down on the increasingly rampant Soviet partisans,” the SS officer said, looking in the direction of the west. It seemed he was talking to himself, and also to the sapper colonel beside him. “The rest will depend on how far our railway can be laid.”

Clang! Another section of rail landed heavily on a neat row of sleepers, making a dull sound. The German sappers hammered at the railway spikes with their sledgehammers, one after another. They were sweating profusely, desperately building the endless railway, desperately repairing the seemingly irreparable railway.

“We will do our best to lay it, desperately lay it,” the sapper colonel said, squinting his eyes at the railway that had been extended another section not far away. “But the enemy is trying every means to destroy these railways. Our own generals hope we will lay more railways. I really don’t know when the end will be…”

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