Chapter 976: The Order That Came

Quiet was quiet, but the final decision still had to be made. After a long while, unable to get the answer he wanted, Stalin finally shouldered this massive blame himself. He spoke slowly, as if with all his remaining strength, “Order Govorov’s troops to continue south. Break through and enter Moscow!”

Letting out a long breath, Vatutin felt his back drenched in sweat. Since Stalin had already made the final decision, there was nothing more for him to say. In recent meetings, a group of politicians had tried to persuade Stalin to retreat to Chelyabinsk, but this proposal had also been rejected by Stalin himself. So Vatutin stood up, preparing to leave Stalin’s office.

Whether it was a final burst of energy before death, or a mental breakdown before collapse, Stalin suddenly spoke, stopping Vatutin. “Comrade Vatutin, I want to know. From the professional perspective of a military commander, is the decision to order Govorov to break out and reinforce Moscow the correct one?”

Vatutin gave a bitter smile, knowing he had not escaped the misfortune of being involved in this matter after all. He turned around, walked to Stalin’s front, and answered softly, “Great leader, Comrade Stalin… to try and outrun the German armored forces with infantry in the open field is an extremely unrealistic idea. A retreat will ultimately turn into a rout. This was already proven during the defeat in the Battle of Ukraine.”

He paused, then continued, “And to have infantry attack a German heavy armored group in the open field is also not a wise move. To this day, we have not a single successful case of a breakout in actual combat. So now, no matter what order is given, for the Govorov group, they can only resign themselves to fate.”

Stalin fell silent for some reason. He did not let Vatutin leave, nor did he ask him any other questions. He just sat there in silence, not even looking at Vatutin.

Just as Vatutin was at a loss as to what to do, Stalin suddenly erupted. He pounded the luxurious solid wood desk in front of him and roared hysterically, “Akado is a liar! His so-called aid was all a shameful deception! The damn Germans have been planning to invade the Soviet Union from the very beginning, but our intelligence department was like a blind man, deceived! Deceived!”

As he cursed, he swept the pile of documents on his desk to the floor. Vatutin, out of the corner of his eye, glanced at the secret documents that had fluttered to the ground. Their contents proved that Stalin’s current state was definitely not caused by a single event.

The scattered documents were a motley collection: including the accidents of gun barrel bursts and boiler explosions on the remaining few ships of the Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships; the giant railway gun, which was supposed to be the Soviet army’s superweapon, being nothing but a pile of unusable scrap iron; hundreds of small submarines having no ocean-going capability and waiting in vain for the German navy to arrive… a whole pile of such grandiose but empty weapon cooperation projects, which had wasted the Soviet Union’s not-so-abundant financial reserves, but had been of no use at all when the war came.

More than half of the German-aided machine tools and trained workers had been retaken by the German army at the beginning of the war. Those Ukrainian workers had immediately defected and had become a part of the German production army, adding bricks and mortar to the equipment of the German army that was invading the Soviet Union. If it weren’t for the Soviet Union having had the foresight to build some of its own industrial bases in Chelyabinsk, the Soviet Union would probably have been finished by now.

The construction of the railways, roads, and even the airfields now seemed to have been entirely for the purpose of paving the way for the rapid advance of the German mechanized forces with Soviet money. The secretly incited and amplified nationalist sentiments, thinking back now, were also completely premeditated. The German invasion of the Soviet Union was a massive, systematic project, and the ridiculous thing was that a large part of it had been diligently completed with the help of the Soviets themselves.

Vatutin no longer had the heart to listen to Stalin’s complaints. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He was shocked by the series of strategic deployments that Germany had made against the Soviet Union. Every link had been arranged in advance, and then interlocked to finally help the German army win today’s victory. The earliest plans had even begun around 1925. How well did one have to know the Soviet Union, how clear did one’s objectives have to be, to have been able to design such an unbelievably precise “prelude to invasion” in advance?

Vatutin suddenly thought of some intelligence, intelligence that was about the investigation into the German leader, Akado. This man, who was called the Führer, was called a gift from God to the German people by the German people. Some even claimed that the Führer could see the future. At that time, Vatutin had still felt that the Germans were too ignorant and foolish. Now he found that this man, who was called a gift from God, could only be explained as a gift from God.

Why? Why wasn’t such a great leader born in the Soviet Union? In an instant, this thought popped into Vatutin’s mind. What he didn’t know was that before he had had this thought, the British and American generals had also had this idea flash through their minds.

“And Khrushchev! And that bastard Voroshilov! It was their clumsy command that made us lose that war where we had the greatest advantage!” Stalin clenched his fists and waved them back and forth, as if he were holding Khrushchev’s soul in his palm. “These bastards only know how to ask me for credit and rewards, but they don’t have a single bit of real ability! The Battle of Poland was a sure win for us, but it was lost by those two idiots!”

He cursed the already-dead Soviet veterans, called out and insulted Marshal Tukhachevsky, the German spy he had executed. He then grumbled about Khrushchev and Voroshilov, and then shifted all the blame to Zhukov, and his subordinates Konev, Vasilevsky, and the traitor Rokossovsky.

In short, he felt that it was a group of incompetent subordinates who had ruined the great future of the Soviet Union. In short, he felt that he had been dragged down by those bastards who were good at deception and disguise. But he did not summarize any of his own mistakes, not even a single painless sentence of excuse like “being easily deceived.”

Like a jilted woman in a boudoir, Stalin, in this instant, had lost that resolute leadership quality and was instead like a thoroughly bullied young wife. He constantly complained and cursed, not to solve the problem or to think of a solution, but purely for the sake of venting. And his only listener, the commander of the Moscow defense zone, His Excellency Vatutin, was also lost in his own thoughts, not paying any attention to what Stalin was saying. And so the two of them, one venting, one daydreaming, were a perfect pair.

At this moment, Stalin was completely immersed in his own feelings of resentment and anger, not paying any attention to whether Vatutin was listening to his roars. In the end, he calmed down, and then, looking at Vatutin with somewhat dazed eyes, he said in a calm voice, “Go! Have Govorov continue south. Even if he can’t break through the German encirclement, to tie down the German forces in the north of Moscow is a good thing.”

Having wandered in his thoughts, having lamented Akado’s heaven-defying abilities and the luck of the German generals, Vatutin, at just the right moment, also brought his thoughts back. He quickly stood at attention and saluted, answering Stalin’s decision. “Yes, great leader, Comrade Stalin! I will immediately relay this decision of yours to the telegraph office.”

“Go! I very much hope to see General Govorov in Moscow soon, and the army he brings with him,” Stalin said, waving his hand to dismiss Vatutin. After Vatutin had left the office, Stalin silently lit his pipe with a match.

After a long wait of four hours, General Govorov finally received the order from Moscow. As expected, Stalin had ordered his troops to continue south. He gave a bitter smile and resolutely carried out this seemingly not-so-wise order.

Forty minutes later, the Soviet vanguard launched a probing attack on Tver, but they were met with a fierce counter-attack from the German armored forces on the outskirts of the city. Seventeen German tanks opened fire fiercely, and the lightly armed infantry, who lacked heavy weapon support, were driven back a full seven kilometers before the pursuit stopped.

The attacking Soviet division had suffered heavy casualties. About 900 soldiers had been annihilated or captured. The Soviet army, having thrown down their helmets and armor, retreated wretchedly along the road, crashing into the baggage train and another infantry division behind them before they finally, barely, came to a stop.

It was ridiculous that, despite suffering such heavy casualties, the Soviet army had not even been able to figure out the scale of the German force. The entire Leningrad group had now become a flock of frightened birds. They were exhausted and lacked supplies, and had no ability to fight a decisive battle with the high-spirited German army.

“We have to wait for the artillery behind us to come up before we can formally launch an attack. Even if the Germans have only reached the outskirts of Tver with their vanguard, we are still helpless,” Govorov said with a sigh. “Because the German vanguard is far more capable of fighting than our own.”

And so, nearly 500,000 Soviet infantry had stopped their advance in the area north of Tver, helplessly waiting for their artillery to move into position at the front so that they could launch an offensive. At the same time, they were also waiting for their opponent, the German armored forces, to strengthen their own defense line.

Later that day, the main force of the 2nd Wehrmacht Panzer Corps passed through the city center of Tver and took up a position on the road of the Soviet Red Army’s southward advance. The Soviet army, which had been pursued for several kilometers by 17 German tanks, discovered with terror that now, in front of them, there were more than 300 German tanks.

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