Chapter 880: The Unbreakable Supply Line

Stalingrad had once been a city that filled the Soviet people with pride. It had been one of the fastest-rising metropolises of the Soviet Union, named after the contemporary leader, Stalin, a testament to its status within the nation.

But now, this city had been utterly reduced to a hellish ruin. And in this ruin, countless soldiers from both sides were now locked in a brutal struggle. Every minute, even every second, a soldier died here, all for the sake of the shattered city beneath their feet.

The German army had thrown a dozen or so newly formed volunteer divisions into the fray here. Led by German officers and soldiers, they launched a tide-like offensive against the Soviet forces. Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Romanians, and Italians were all fighting in this city, striving for their own freedom and that of their families.

But most of them were actually Ukrainians and Belarusians. They loathed the Soviets who had ravaged their homelands and hoped to stand up at this time to fight for the Third Reich, to use the steel guns in their hands to avenge their fallen brothers and sisters.

Several Ukrainian soldiers, wearing ill-fitting black SS uniforms and steel helmets, were clumsily pushing a 75mm infantry gun through the ruins. This field gun was French-made, and its shells came from Belgium. The Ukrainian soldiers were covered in dust, which had obscured the original color of their black uniforms. In this environment of war, the dust on their bodies and the beards on their faces were insignificant things, not needing to be tended to.

They pushed the wheels of the cannon, advancing with difficulty, bit by bit. The rubber coating on the edge of the wheels, meant to reduce wear and vibration, was now almost completely worn away, leaving only the metal-clad wooden wheels. To reduce the use of rubber, many pieces of German equipment had been made with cut corners, and the soldiers at the front had grown accustomed to it.

Compared to the German army’s own field gun, the short-barreled 75mm infantry gun, the French cannon, apart from being heavier and less convenient to move with armored units, was superior in all other aspects of performance. After more self-propelled guns were produced and began to be equipped, the German infantry had begun to phase out their own small, lightweight 75mm infantry guns and were being heavily equipped with the French 75mm field gun.

These Ukrainian soldiers finally pushed the cannon over the rubble of what had once been a collapsed building and onto the German offensive position. In front of them was a half-collapsed building. Inside, about a dozen of their fellow Ukrainian soldiers were on the defensive.

The mission was very simple: under the cover of friendly fire, push this cannon out from the corner of the building on the left, and then directly bombard the enemy’s position, to drive the Soviets out of the building they were in, and then launch an attack to occupy it. This kind of mission was carried out several times a day, and everyone was already familiar with it. So, after a brief arrangement, the entire Ukrainian infantry company of the German army began to move.

The sound of gunfire intensified. Tracer rounds flew back and forth between the two buildings. The bullets struck the thick, traditional Russian architecture, leaving only a mottled pattern of craters. The characteristics of traditional Russian buildings were distinct. To withstand the cold winter, the windows were extremely small and the walls were extremely thick—every building was a natural fortress, incredibly strong.

“Push! Push hard!” a Ukrainian squad leader shouted, encouraging his men. They shouted slogans with all their might and pushed this rather heavy cannon from behind the friendly-occupied building onto the street beside it. The Soviet soldiers clearly saw the change here, and the bullets also began to sweep over densely.

A Ukrainian soldier was hit and fell, but more Ukrainian soldiers, with their heads bowed, pushed the cannon to its designated position. A shell was loaded into the chamber, and several gunners frantically cranked the handles that controlled the cannon’s angle, quickly aiming it at the target they were about to fire on.

“Fire! Fire!” a Ukrainian officer shouted to his men, one hand on his helmet, cowering behind the gun shield. Then came a deafening roar. The sound of gunfire in his ears all disappeared, leaving only a ringing sound.

BOOM! As the cannon spewed a cloud of white smoke, on the other side, the building that was already half-collapsed, next to a Soviet machine gun nest that was constantly spitting fire, a huge flower formed by a massive flame immediately blossomed. Broken bricks, floorboards, and chandeliers all fell down, and thick smoke billowed up several stories high.

The Soviet heavy machine gun that had been firing frantically just now broke apart and rolled down from the ruins of the second floor, making a crisp sound as it hit the concrete ground. With this machine gun nest destroyed by a single German shot, the Soviet troops in this building had lost their reliable pillar of fire support.

“Attack! Machine gun cover!” a German commander leading these Ukrainian soldiers shouted. At his shout, these Ukrainian soldiers began to leap out of their cover without a second thought, holding their rifles and charging towards the Soviet positions opposite them.

This was their moment of revenge. Before they went to the battlefield, they had to do two things: one was to read the letters from home about their happy lives after receiving their share of the land; the other was to collectively recall the miserable lives they had lived under Soviet rule. Now the time for their revenge had come. As long as they killed all the Soviets, the entire Ukraine would have a better future.

The MG42 machine gun began to fire frantically. The sound of ripping linen was always so clear on the battlefield. Whenever this sound began to roar, it meant that many Soviet soldiers had died, and it meant that the horn for the German offensive had been blown.

On the not-so-wide street, one after another, the Ukrainian soldiers charged from this building towards the one opposite. From time to time, someone would be hit and fall. From time to time, someone would be turned into a hornet’s nest by the bullets from the other side. But they still managed to cross the short distance and charge into the building where the Soviets were stationed.

Crack! Leaning against the outside of a window, a Ukrainian soldier raised his Mauser rifle and fired a shot inside. The Soviet soldier inside, who had been trying to get out the door, was shot in the back and fell, face down, in the doorway. More soldiers entered the building through the broken and collapsed walls. The two sides fought for several rooms. After a dozen or so Soviet soldiers had been killed, a German officer had someone hang a huge national flag on the roof of this building.

The Ukrainian soldiers had already been on this battlefield for a full 20 days. In this long period of time, those soldiers who could not adapt had long been eliminated by the cruel battle and had died in battle in some corner of the ruins here. The rest had already grown accustomed to their surroundings. Just like the German army, they were now skilled in combat and almost never made a mistake.

Making the most of their time, the German army had, in a concealed, low-lying place, set up a simple machine gun nest, contrary to their usual practice. After leaving a retreat trench, most of the infantry were scattered around the buildings, with scouts left on the high ground as lookouts. A three-dimensional defensive position was thus completed, quietly waiting for a possible Soviet counter-attack.

Unlike the history of another timeline, the German army in this Battle of Stalingrad was fighting with more method. The N Army Group under Küchler was clearly more suitable for street fighting than the 6th Army under Paulus back then. The German army under Akado was much stronger than the German army under Hitler, so now Küchler was at ease, while Paulus was stretched thin.

Küchler had divided Stalingrad into dozens of small squares. He had drawn all of these areas on a map. The squares adjacent to the front line were marked in red to represent dangerous areas. The areas adjacent to the red squares were marked in blue to indicate possible Soviet infiltration. The areas that had been occupied for more than five days and where no Soviet troops had appeared were marked in green—these squares were relatively safe.

In the red and blue squares, the German army had organized several layers of defensive circles with a heavy force to ensure that the Soviets could not infiltrate the green squares and cause trouble behind their lines. Then, in the green squares, the German army used special forces to repeatedly comb through, to ensure the absolute security of these areas.

This method of fighting made the German advance very slow, but it was almost one step at a time. To this day, no Soviet army had retaken a green square, which was proof of the success of Küchler’s tactics. If they were to firmly carry out this tactic, Küchler would only need three months to drive the Soviets out of Stalingrad, which was a result that Rokossovsky did not want to see.

“It is obvious,” Küchler said to his subordinates in his command post on the outskirts of Stalingrad. “My opponent, Rokossovsky, will not go down to defeat so willingly. I am waiting for his counter-attack, and this counter-attack will surely come.”

What he didn’t know was that the underground shelter command post he was in now, which looked quite good, had actually been Rokossovsky’s frontline command post two months ago. Here, Rokossovsky had personally commanded the battle for the railway bridge. The result was that in that battle, the German army had unbelievably captured the railway bridge, and Rokossovsky could only retreat in defeat.

“A report from the air force. Their bombing of the shipping lanes on both sides of the Volga has been very ineffective. The pilots have not been trained to attack targets on the sea surface, and their bombing accuracy is very low. This has also led to the Soviets easily completing eighty percent of their personnel and material transport,” the chief of staff said helplessly to Küchler. “They say that in these past few days, at least three divisions of Soviet troops have entered Stalingrad using the Volga shipping route.”

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