Chapter 934: The Stage I Don't Want to Leave

Küchler could be said to be the second most stressed general in the German army right now. Apart from Guderian, who was locked in a fiery battle with Zhukov, the burden on his shoulders was arguably the heaviest. The originally ample timetable for the capture of Stalingrad had become urgent due to the southward advance of Zhukov’s formations.

Therefore, he could no longer proceed with his attack step by step according to his original plan. At the very least, he had to detach the main infantry force of N Army Group to support G Army Group to his north before Guderian’s forces collapsed.

The good news was that General Manstein was singing a triumphant song all the way through the high mountains and lofty ridges and had already approached the important town of Grozny. A large part of the heavy artillery from M Army Group’s attack on the Crimean Peninsula had been left by Manstein for N Army Group, as a bargaining chip for the capture of Stalingrad, placed on the gambling table that would decide the fate of the two nations.

And in these few days, Küchler had not been idle. His army group had launched an accelerated battle for Stalingrad with a frenzy. At the central railway station of Stalingrad, the German and Soviet armies were engaged in a frantic battle. Both sides had thrown 4,000 men into a space of less than one square kilometer to fight for it repeatedly. At the most brutal moments, the bodies of the dead actually covered the positions of both sides.

When the German soldiers stormed the platform, the Soviet reinforcements had just arrived. The two sides engaged in a brutal hand-to-hand battle. In just two short hours of fighting, the German army had lost a full 1,000 soldiers. Of course, in the end, this railway station was finally captured by the Germans, its ruined walls covered in a dense pattern of bullet holes.

The place that was originally used to store goods had now become a place for piling up corpses. Blood pooled on the platform, then flowed down its side, and finally dried on the stone steps, a shocking sight. A group of German soldiers and a large group of Ukrainian soldiers were desperately building their own fortifications. This was a habit they had developed over more than a month; every time they reached a new place, they had to set up in this way.

In the evening, everything fell silent. Then, from a shout that came from who knows where, the Soviet Red Army’s night raid began as punctually as if it were a shift change. The cruel night battle tormented the fragile will of the soldiers on both sides. The tracer rounds, against the backdrop of the night, were even brighter and more dazzling.

A flare suddenly lit up in the sky, and the vicinity was immediately illuminated as if it were day. Then the dense sound of gunfire came from all directions. All the moving objects that were exposed in the light were instantly turned into sieves by the flying bullets.

The Soviet army had committed more soldiers. Group after group of Soviet Red Army soldiers, shouting “Urrah!”, charged out of the surrounding buildings and got entangled with the numerically inferior German soldiers. One after another of miserable screams came. The bloody and cruel hand-to-hand combat had, as usual, begun at the end of the battle, and then, as the German soldiers fell one after another, this place gradually returned to its proper quiet.

Before the surviving Soviets could even catch their breath, the shells of the German heavy artillery had already cut through the sky. Retaliation always came so timely, so timely that it gave people no time to even make a move to run. The huge explosions echoed in the night sky. The flash of the exploding shells, accompanied by the flying limbs and severed torsos, tinged the night sky with a deep blood-red.

The battle for the whole of Stalingrad had lasted for a whole night. When the sun cast its first ray of light on the horizon, the German army was freed from its defensive posture of the whole night. And so these dust-covered grenadiers, holding their steel guns, had a warm-up exercise before breakfast.

The “Building Destroyer” multiple rocket launcher was the prelude to this warm-up exercise. A dozen or so consecutively fired Panzerfaust rockets had, in one go, turned a building held by the Soviets into a pile of rubble. The German attacking force, after this one salvo, had, as was to be expected, launched their attack.

Leaning against the walls of the buildings on both sides of the street, their upper bodies bent, holding their rifles and clutching hand grenades, the German grenadiers began their attack with small steps. The machine gun detachment that was supporting their attack had already climbed to the top of the ruins in the distance, skillfully setting up the bipods of their machine guns and pressing the ammunition belts into the bodies of the guns.

A Soviet soldier, who had struggled to his feet from the ruins, had no idea where he was. He coughed, slapping the dirt and dust from his body, and turned, hoping to see some familiar sight.

Just a few seconds ago, he had been in a shelter near a building, waiting for the German soldiers’ attack. But with the vibration caused by countless huge explosions, the entire building had begun to collapse. Before he could figure out what was happening, the shelter he was hiding in had become a grave that had almost buried him alive.

“Cough, cough! Cough cough cough!” He squinted his eyes, trying to find his former comrades and everything familiar in the floating dust. But he was destined to be disappointed. Apart from some furniture that was mostly buried, he could only find the arm of a comrade or an exposed boot or rifle in the rubble at his feet.

The smoke and dust gradually dissipated, and he finally saw his position clearly. This Soviet soldier, who was probably only 18 years old, raised his head in despair and looked in the direction he was supposed to be defending with his gun.

There, a German grenadier of the same age, only eighteen or nineteen, had straightened his body. He was holding a G43 semi-automatic rifle in his hands. Under the brim of his cold steel helmet were a pair of equally cold and merciless eyes.

The corner of the young Soviet soldier’s mouth twitched, as if he were trying to force a smile. But in the end, he failed, because the person opposite him seemed to be in no mood to see him smile. That equally young German grenadier had pulled the trigger he had been pressing with his finger, and a bullet had accurately pierced the Soviet Red Army soldier’s head.

Without a struggle, without a hesitation, this Soviet soldier, at the same time as his head exploded, fell backward neatly and then crashed onto the uneven rubble, his body twisting into a strange shape with the terrain. From this moment on, he was no different from the ruins. In a few hours, he would be buried by the collapsing bricks and tiles around him, or covered with a thick layer of dust.

The closer they got to the core of Stalingrad, the more things the Germans found to be thankful for. For example, the soldiers of the 14th Infantry Corps, in the basement of an unknown small city block, had discovered 20 tons of potatoes and other grains hidden by the Soviets. Because of this 20-ton windfall, the frontline soldiers had enjoyed their first extra meal on the front line.

As the overall commander of the attack on Stalingrad, General Küchler had already sworn a military oath to Akado. This general had sworn that if he could not take this half-occupied city in 15 days, he would resign his post as commander of N Army Group and personally enter Stalingrad with a Mauser rifle.

Unfortunately, a full two days had passed. His troops had lost 20,000 men but had only taken two city blocks. The battle seemed to have no end in sight, but it was clear that Küchler had not given up. He was deploying his troops, striving to fulfill the oath he had made to the Führer, or rather, to the entire Empire.

Of course, swearing an oath does not guarantee the completion of a mission. Guan Yu had sworn an oath before Huarong Road, but in the end, he had still treated his words as a fart. Leaving aside distant examples, a recent example of this was Rokossovsky, who had sworn to defend Stalingrad. It now seemed that his oath had not played the role of a stabilizing pillar.

In his dilapidated, dim… basement, Rokossovsky’s pale face wore a dejected expression. Don’t ask why so many pitiful people who were defending a city had such an inseparable bond with a basement. Hitler in another timeline, Churchill and Khrushchev in this one, and Rokossovsky—it was no coincidence that they had all holed up in a basement at the last moment. Because in a city full of ruins, it was very difficult to find a place safer than a reinforced basement.

This defender of Stalingrad, whom Stalin had ordered to share the fate of the city (what a mouthful), his heart must now be full of the hope that Zhukov would arrive in time. The reserves in his hands were really not many now. While wearing down the Germans, Rokossovsky was also consuming his own troops by the tens of thousands.

In the beginning, he could still calmly compare whose patience and reserves were more abundant with Küchler. But as they fought, half of Stalingrad had been lost, which made him very uneasy. And so both sides had thrown their troops in to fight for it repeatedly, and the Soviet losses had also risen in a straight line at a visible rate.

The German snipers and special detachments in the urban street fighting were much more formidable than the Soviets had imagined. A small detachment of a dozen or so men could often take out several hundred Soviet soldiers and could do so almost unscathed. To take out 17 soldiers from such a German special detachment, Rokossovsky had sacrificed a full 900 lives.

Now, the German frontline positions were really only a little over a kilometer from his command post. For Rokossovsky, who had once been a number one figure in the Soviet military, this really had a taste of a sorrowful parting.

He really didn’t want to leave this stage. He wanted to stand in the center of the stage and interpret his own role. Whether it was important or marginal, he had to have a role in this remade world order.

“Send another telegram to Marshal Zhukov. Tell him I will do my best to hold on until the very last second,” Rokossovsky said, looking at his aide, whose face was also not very good from the long absence of daylight.

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