THE IRON EAGLE
DAYS OF STRIFE
OSTKRIEG
There were many paintings in the halls of that gallery, sculptures, even original writings of old poets such as Pushkin, it was the best one could find of Russian culture which had been moved into what Russia now was, a vast expanse between the Volga river and the Pacific Ocean, surrounded on all sides by the Reich or by the Chinese, it was a nation under siege but that mentality was not new. This exposition in Perm was meant to symbolize a rebirth of that city, a Russian City which had incorporated all the resilience and stoicism of it's people. The Tsar had given great resources to the reconstruction of the West following the Ural War, the first significant victory Russia had in years. Cities and towns such as Perm, Orenburg, Izhevsky, Orsk, Brisk, Kambarka, Chernushka and Tchaikosvky had all received the titles of "Hero Cities of the Empire", a few of them even suffering Nuclear attacks and having to be rebuilt from the ground up or from rubble once the radiation was vanished. The German ambitions were frustrated thanks to their sacrifice and now, in the year of 1962, most of them were on their way to finish reconstruction and the government was eager to showcase this cultural triumph through the exposition.
In that exposition, there was a painting which Lieutenant Morozkin could watch for hours only to dwell in the memories, one of fishermen from the Volga river dragging a wooden boat to catch their daily prize. He stood tall for his age, but for any man or woman who saw him, and especially for the children, he appeared at first glance to look a decade older than he truly was. Perhaps because of the sharpnel scar in his cheek from when a German artillery shell fell near his position during the war, perhaps because the conflict did leave him look more strict and stoic, a quality many admired in the country, or maybe it was the medal which he always used in his attire. He bled and made others bleed, killed and was almost killed for that medal and he would not go anywhere without showing everyone that he was a hero, as the Tsar said he was.
He was in the Volga, the great river which was once the heartland of Russia, now it was the final frontier, the border, because right across, the Germans were awaiting with the largest standing formation of the Wehrmacht, and the Russians in turn awaited with one of the largest armies in the world, of which he was part. Even if after the war there was a demobilization, even if some wanted a return to normalcy, everyone knew that there could be no normality while the Germans lived. He was too young to remember the first invasion, when his parents left Leningrad and crossed the Volga to live in Kazan, only to flee again once the German lapdogs and collaborators crossed the border during the bloody civil war, living like nomads and going from place to place depending on the rations being distributed. The 40s were a dark time, he could remember that, but he could not remember the German, he could not remember the ones to blame, the cause of everything.
Four years earlier, he did see the German in it's full strength, but before that he had seen them in the eyes of the refugees, whenever boats would cross the Volga, full of starved refugees, full of peoples of all languages crossing into Russia, a country he always knew for it's harshness, and thanked God for being able to be there. When he saw people break into tears of relief and cry out of joy for being able to live in the nation which, for most of the world, was a synonym of brutality, they were singing praises and dancing as if they reached heaven while he saw Russia as a purgatory for most of his life. He still loved his country, of course, he would not forget his parents' sacrifice by abandoning it like his brother did, but even he recognized it was not an easy life, and yet those people were telling him stories from across the Volga that left him the impression that the gates of hell were right across that river. "Whatever a German touches, turns into venom" his mother once said, and he almost felt like the land across had this dark air that was like an old story of good and evil. He could see the Germans too, men in grey uniforms, men in black uniforms, men in camouflaged uniforms, spy planes, monstrous war machines, they looked like an ever-looming threat, and he knew in other stations it looked worse because they did have footholds across the Volga in places such as Samara.
Then one day they all crossed, and it was at that moment he stopped looking at the painting and went back to walking. Yes, he did put up a bravado, but no man could come out of that war with indifference, not when he saw the flames of hell, when he saw the atomic fire in this very city. He was not in it that day, but they all knew it would come as soon as reports came of the enormous canon the Germans were bringing, they all left the city, with an advanced force left in the kilometers of underground bunkers and tunnels beneath Perm to strike the Teuton foe by surprise when they believed their flames to have cleansed the city of enemies. He was not one of those underground, rather he was one of the men who was to lead the assault to prevent their retreat. He saw the flames, a blinding light like a second sun, then the shockwave, the heat wave, he saw it spreading into the city, and he would still see it another time before the war ended and he understood what kind of monster they were fighting, why so many were relieved to escape from them.
As he walked, he saw a group of children, a classroom apparently, led in by a teacher to look at the wonderful windows to the soul of Russia. Many looked at him while he walked on the other side of the hallway, headed to the exit, and there was a sense of amusement from them. They probably saw soldiers before, as everyone did, but he was a Lieutenant, and he was wearing his uniform today even if he was not really on duty, which was a common practice in this region. Then someone broke ranks from the children and hurried across the hallway before the teacher could stop him, it was a young boy holding a piece of paper, and he trailed behind Morozkin with a glow in his eyes that made the officer stop. The kid raised up his paper, it was a drawing he made, with a soldier standing ahead of children, apparently shooting some twisted grey human that was meant to be a German. And right above there were the words "Thank You" written in them. Morozkin humored the child, taking the paper, patting his head and even smiling to him, replying with his own thanks to the boy who returned back to his group. Did he know that boy? Or his family? Unlikely, but he was a soldier, and there was no profession now in the entire country which was as respected. This is what he was fighting for, to preserve this harsh country from something worse, perhaps naively hoping that one day, that generation would do better.
For the first time in twenty years, the Russian troops had crossed the Volga river to the west. It was an assault long awaited, ever since the Soviet troops were force to withdraw in 1943, after the long and grueling years of the Civil War, after resisting the Reich's offensive in the Urals, today was the day to finally pay them back and there was no better opportunity. The original plan had been for a winter offensive in January while a substantial force of the Wehr and the Luftflotte V was drawing in the air force into Israel, that would have been the Tsar's way to show some "solidarity" with the Jewish State, although many Russians saw the Jews as no different from the Reich, the majority of the government, including the Tsar, was pragmatic enough to seize this chance. That plan was delayed, but when news came on the 7th of Goebbels' death and of Speer's death on the 8th with the Reich reaching to call for a ceasefire, Operation Poltava was greenlit immediately with the attack beginning on the evening of the 8th to the 9th of February with the largest offensive operation in Russian History.
There were many years of preparation before this strike, ever since the Ural War, there were plans to continue the war and strike back against the Germans, plans which were shuffled in 1959 with the end of the War. But the High Command of the Empire was well aware that any peace with the Reich, especially the Reich led by the outspoken militant Joseph Goebbels, would be temporary and the next conflict had to be fought in the Russian terms. The 6 and a half years between the end of the Ural War and the start of Operation Poltava were spent in a constant state of war weariness and readiness, with weekly drills in towns and cities across the country to protect against attacks of chemical and nuclear weapons, with the formation of the so called "reconstruction brigades" which conscripted civilians to work on the reconstruction of the West Russian cities and infrastructure (although the great majority of it's members were volunteers), the extension of the military service and constant military exercises, as well as the enlistment of a new generation of officers and the change in the military curriculum of the military academies in order to adapt the armed forces from the recent lessons.
The Russian economy returned to a war footing in 1965 with the rising tensions in the Middle East, there were many signs of a Russian buildup across the border which were practically ignored by Joseph Goebbels during that year for sake of his obsession in destroying Israel and the Western powers, Goebbels saw the Russians as a beaten enemy who would take a generation to even recover from the Ural War, vastly overestimating the devastation inflicted by the Wehrmacht and underestimating the efforts undertaken by Tsar Andrey's government to restore the country to it's war footing. Perhaps it was a level of Goebbels' own racial prejudices, perhaps because the idea of an Eastern War was a far less popular among the Germans as a purely antisemitic war against the Jewish State with the Star of David in it's flag, or perhaps because the constant purges of the SS also included several SD agents responsible for monitoring the Eastern Frontier and replaced it with unexperienced men who many times gave false alarms, some leaked by the Russian Intelligence itself, who gave a "crying wolf" effect that deafened the Reich when the surprise attack finally came.
The forces gathered for Operation Poltava began to be organized during the autumn of 1965 and the mobilization order was given on the 18th of December when the war with Israel began, the plan for the operation consisted of two main assaults: The Northern Front and the Southern Front, the former commanded by the former Soviet Marshal Giorgy Zhukov and the latter commanded by the White Veteran, Marshal Vladimir Kharzhevsky. The Northern Front, contrary to it's name, concentrated it's offensive across the central plains of Western Russia with the goal of reclaiming Moscow and, if possible, Smolensk, responsible for the offensive in the Reichskommissariat of Moscowien, while the Southern Front targeted the Don river basin with the goal of overruning the lands of the Volga Germans and cutting off the Caucasus, the main source of petrol and several mineral resources of the Reich, from Germania itself by land. Furthermore, a force was assembled on the Caspian sea to launch an invasion of the Kaukasus, specifically the rich petrol-producing lands of the former Azerbaijan.
Perhaps the greatest trump card for the Russian Empire was the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, the first Russian Atomic device was tested in secret near the artic circle, close to the city of Norilsk, a 30 Kiloton bomb, from there on the tests would be conducted in underground facilities, the main one north of the city of Tomsk, the nuclear ambiguity was kept purposefully until the start of the war when, publicly, the Tsar announced the possession of a Nuclear device during his speech declaring the start of Operation Poltava, threatening the Reich with the destruction of a German city for each Russian city targeted by the bombs. At first it was believed to be a bluff, but after the detonation of a bomb in Haifa by the Israeli forces, the threat of an enemy possessing an atomic arsenal of their own was looming over the heads of the German leadership.
Speaking of German leadership, the success of the Russian offensive was secured by said leadership, especially due to the recent powergrab by Marshal Remer and the order of surrender to the Volkssturm. The Reichskommissariats of Don-Wolga, under Karl Asmus and Kaukasus under Rolf Karbach, were fiercely devoted to Joseph Goebbels with both leaders being members of the Volkssturm, after the announcement of Speer's rise, they quickly began to make moves against the Wehrmacht in their territories, which they held under Iron grip with the support of the local Volkssturm, mostly made up by settler-colonists sent to the east under Darré's "Blood and Soil" approach to the Lebensraum in the years of 1960-1966. The Wehrmacht command in those territories was assaulted as both leaders would continue to declare allegiance to Joseph Goebbels, refusing to believe that he had been killed and instead this was a repeat of Naumann's putsch. Even after the failure of Hoffmann's march and Remer's more direct seizure of power, both territories were still in rebellion against Germania, with only Ostland and Ukraine properly announcing their allegiance to Remer. Siegfried Kasche kept an uneasy neutrality in Moscowien which was only settled with the news of the assault that led to him swearing his allegiance to Remer.
Furthermore, many of the soldiers sent to man the eastern defenses were made up by the Volkssturm, again due to Goebbels' and Darré's ideological view for the east which was inspired by the roman Veteran Colonies and Hitler's view of social darwinism, where the settlers in the east were meant to be reshaped by it's conditions into fighters and the lands in the east would function similarly to medieval Marks as a "frontier" territory. As a result, many of the defenses had large holes easy to be exploited by the Russians as the Wehrmacht fought a de-facto civil war in the east against such units and, with their surrender, had to transfer them to the West for imprisonment, which overloaded the train tracks and roads with troops headed westwards. There was no better time to strike than the 8th to the 9th of February of 1966, there was no better hope or opportunity, the formidable German defenses on the Volga were undermanned with a portion of it extending from Samara to the Or river being kept by the Volkssturm, a rival and undisciplined organization to the Wehrmacht which was in open rebellion against Germania, fighting for a dead man.
And so began Operation Poltava at exactly 0200 AM on the 9th of February of 1966, with the largest artillery barrage ever unleashed from a buildup of almost 7 years, missiles rained down in a stretch of 30 miles between the German front and it's rearguard, several partisan cells, operating within the Reich's vast territory, carried a coordinated act of sabotage in roads, railroads, bridges, radio towers, electric cables and armament depots. The feared Atomic Guns of the Reich were neutralized within minutes by the combined air-land strike while the Russian infantry crossed the frozen Volga river to assault the German defenses on foot, a total of 4 million soldiers engaging in the offensive across two fronts, in total, 5% of the Russian population would be mobilized for this offensive, with an aerial offensive coordinated with the tactic missile strikes at German airfields and radar stations as far back as the outskirts of Adolfsburg. The capture of the banks of the Volga river took a matter of minutes and, with the bridgeheads established, the Russian armored forces were able to cross the Volga to reach the enemy territory, with an assault awaited for over a generation being unleashed with an unmatched level of coordination in the Russian Army after years of training and the advancements in communications technology.
Within only 24 hours, 170 thousand soldiers of the Wehrmacht and Volkssturm alike would be captured, the Russian troops crossed the Volga river and the western half of the city once named Kazan was retaken, as well as a general collapse in the German forces between the Volga and Or rivers. The success of the assault was almost unexpected by the Russian High Command's wildest expectations, Zhukov, who led the forces of the Northern Front, believed that the plans to reach the city of Moscow before April could be achieved if the momentum was kept through a front-wide offensive. There were roughly a million and a half Germans to man the eastern border following the downsizing of the Wehrmacht after the Ural War and the transfer of assets to the Levant, and 400 thousand of those were members of the Volkssturm in the Southern front who were shattered by the Russian offensive with the cities of Samara and Saratov being both lost within a week while the Russians reached Astrakhan on the 14th of February.
Furthermore, Karbach refused to believe the Wehrmacht's signals of a coming offensive across the Caspian sea, the suspicious Reichskommissar believed that the suggestion for the leadership to evacuate Baku and head to the city of Lindau (formerly Grozny) was a trap by Remer loyalists to assassinate him and seize back the territory, he was still unaware of the wider attack happening that night. The Russian amphibious assault was carried out alongside an aerial strike on Baku's port facilities and a landing on the northern part of the Peninsula at the town formerly known as Sumgayit, a total of 30 thousand men including airborne units would assault the city and establish a bridgehead with Karbach at first believing it was a strike by Wehrmacht loyalists against him, only too late did he realize the gravity and ordered a general withdrawal, but he was one of the few who was able to escape to Lindau while Baku itself was taken alongside 15 thousand prisoners. Karbach's helicopter would be shot down by a Russian jet near the Caucasian mountains and he would die in the crash, creating a power vacuum in the region as the Volkssturm lost it's local leadership and the morale collapsed.
Adolfsburg was once the city of Stalingrad, the city in which the Soviets lost the war, Stalin's ego directed his efforts towards the south in ill-advised and rushed offensive operations to reclaim the city which bore his name and controlled the gateway to the Caucasus, so much so that he spent precious resources in it that could not be later spared to defend Moscow from falling to the forces of the Axis in the end of 1942. Now Adolfsburg was suffering two invasions, from the West the Wehrmacht would mobilize it's assets and strike the Don-Wolga region to overthrow the mutinous Volkssturm, whereas from the east, soldiers from the Volkssturm were fleeing into the city and were setting up defenses to defend it from the advancing Russian Forces. The first contact between Kharzevsky's Southern Front and the city happened on the 16th of February as the Russian forces, following a week of advance, reached the eastern outskirts of the city and fought the vicious and fanatic defense of the Volkssturm under Asmus, joined together with forces from the Kaukasus and German conscripts from the nearby towns. The Russians, following the capture of the former city of Saratov further north, would cross the Volga and begin a general offensive into the city from the North and East while a bombing campaign ravaged the settlement which bore the name of Adolf Hitler.
The proud Volga-German Karl Asmus was a man who practically worshipped Goebbels, who he considered a savior of the Volga Germans after the previous agreement secured their release from decades of Russian custodianship in the Ural War and who received some of the most fertile lands in the east as settlement. Asmus considered Remer a traitor who either had Joseph Goebbels under custody or assassinated him, either way he was a reactionary usurper unfit to rule the Reich. In both Wolga and the Kaukasus, the men still saluted with the "Heil Goebbels" salute, the Volkssturm overwhelmed the local Wehrmacht and took the majority of their heavily outnumbered men as prisoners, there was a plan to ally with Siegfried Kasche and march westwards into Germania, rallying the German Volk to overthrow Remer's Military rule, a plan which was practically impossible to succeed and now was impossible to be even put into action due to the Russian Assault. Asmus would finally admit defeat as he ordered the Volkssturm to fight to the last in Adolfsburg and promptly fled to Rostow, surrendering himself and Don-Wolga to the leadership of the Wehrmacht. General Heinrich Eberbach would receive his surrender and was given the overall command of the defense of the Caucasus and the Volga by Remer on the 19th, the same day where Adolfsburg's eastern half was captured and when Russian armored forces arrived north of the city.
The Volkssturm was given the order to abandon Adolfsburg and reorganize in the west across the Don river where the Wehrmacht prepared a counter attack, many refused to leave, ended up encircled in the city and captured within the next week as the Russians seized Adolfsburg, ceremonially renaming it as Tsaritsyn. Combined with the capture of Astrakhan, the Volga was crossed in the south and the plains of the Don were open for conquest with the disarray of the Volkssturm and the fall of the Caucasian warlord. The first major check to the Russian advance in the Southern Front was the fight over the Don river against General Eberbach's forces which, despite being outnumbered roughly 3:1, were able to conduct a successful fighting withdrawal and fought the spread Russian forces in detail with his faster divisions. However, after the fall of Lindau/Grozny in March, with Russian forces seizing the entire Caspian coastline, the majority of the Northern Caucasus was successfully taken by the time April arrived, with the Germans still able to hold Georgia, the former city of Krasnodar and, most importantly, the city of Rostov, successfully defended by the newly promoted Field Marshal Eberbach against the overextended Russian forces on the 8th of April and, as the road conditions became worse, both sides would have to settle down in their frontlines and reorganize the supply lines.
To the North, Zhukov faced the full strength of the Wehrmacht in Moscowien, and yet the initial offensive was no less successful. The deportation of millions of Russians and Ukrainians from the Don region following the creation of the Don-Wolga led to millions of resentful exploited civilians to be sent to Moscowien, acting as a fertile soil for partisan activity which worked constantly to undermine the German logistical networks. Yet, after two decades of rule, much of the East was considered as relatively pacified by the Reich, the logistical challenges of Operation Barbarossa now worked in favor of the Reich, a substantial amount of German soldiers was even recruited among an entire generation which was born in the immediate aftermath of the war in the first settlements in the east established around 1944 and 1945, who knew the terrain as their own home. Theodor Tolsdorff, a general of Remer's generation which arose in ranks in the post-war era and attained the rank following the Ural War, was promoted as Marshal and charged with the defense of Moscowien. The Wehrmacht conducted a withdrawal after the Russian breakthrough and Siegfried Kasche would be ordered to relocate from Wesselstadt, formerly Moscow, to the west, alongside the local apparatus of the government. Moscow itself would be the target of a fierce battle at the end of March of 1966.
Lieutenant, or rather now, Major Morozkin, was in the thick of the fighting on the late days of march, it was the 29th in his account, the fourth day of the assault against the German defenses of Wesselstadt, a name he refused to pronounce and dared any man in his unit to speak if they would live to be in a shoveling duty. This was Moscow, the legendary city itself, the heart, the birthplace of Russia itself, but he did not recognize the city from the paintings, where were the domes of the hundreds of churches that made the sunrise reflect on the horizon? Where was the Kremlin with it's mighty crimson walls where the Tsars of old ruled over the largest nation on earth? Where were the Russians?
He was inside a building they were using as a headquarters in their assault into the city itself, the details were disturbing, there were swastikas, there were German newspapers, there were German paintings, there was a German breed of dog when they came, there were German drinks and food labeled with German words. Was this really the heart of Russia or did they just arrive in Germania? No, from all sources he heard, Germania was a Metropolis of millions which dwarfed this glorified town, a city with an architecture that had nothing of majestic or Russian, they could very well be in the middle of Bavaria. All while they looked at a map which showed Russian names to neighborhoods which no longer existed, buildings long demolished, streets long renamed, as part of an even greater plan to reclaim lands that were said to be Russian.
Of course there were Russians around, in the way here they passed by large farms, small towns, a mix of both, where the German occupants were either dispatched or fled west, the locals looked at him as if he was an angel, an angel covered in blood, ash and sweat. They spoke in a rather odd accent with words he never heard, but still so many of them were grateful, those poor thin souls who were so eager to grab a rifle and join them in their march west. In other places he could very well have been a demon, because the younger ones looked at him as if he had slaughtered a member of their families. Some of them claimed to not have a name when asked, others had a germanic-sounding name, others just tried to avoid even looking at him. One was bold enough to claim they were here to kill them and slaughter the land, he attempted to correct them, but only for them to double down and even say "You Russian savages only bring death, the Reich brings us peace". That odd young man was the one who astonished him the most, he claimed to be a Muscovite, an Untermenschen, not a Russian, he was not the only one to say that, the children were more visceral with their hatred, in one settlement, a group of locals was even shooting at them.
That is what astonished him most, there were a few Russians who were shooting at them and defending the same maniacs who worked them on a daily basis to near death.
How could anyone be standing up for their slave masters was a shock to him, it made him look past that for each one who did this, there were ten or twenty grateful souls who took the path to the east to stay out of the zone of conflict. The High command expected that, claiming that they had units and companies to escort entire caravans with thousands of people to the east of the Volga where they could stay away from the thick of the fighting. But those "Russians", who acted like a beaten dog defending a brutal owner, were what broke his heart, this and the fact that the very heart of Russia looked like a German town put into a new light what this offensive was. It did not feel like a return to a home he could barely remember, or the reclamation of their ancestral land like the commissars claimed, it felt like they were being the invaders of a German land, freeing their slaves and yet still being outsiders.
Now they were fighting over Wesselstadt, a brutal fight just as the last snow was thawing, the fight here took longer than it should have, the Wehrmacht was bringing in more and more reinforcements and they had few choices other than to continue the frontal assault and the brutal fighting street by street while artillery shells and rockets rained down on the city, being shot from both sides. Morozkin and his company lost more fighting in this city than they lost in the previous month entirely, they were not facing untrained conscripts or the Volkssturm, they were facing one of the best armies in the world and the fight over the skies was more and more contested from what he heard, the Germans were coming and there were more of them every day, even if they took the city, even if they had time to dig down during the Autumn mud season, the summer would bring a vengeance, they would have to give everything they had and fight twice as hard as they ever fought to survive that summer.
There could not have been a more critical time for the Reich to be invaded than the aftermath of the Day of the Four Leaders, but one consequence was that the reign of Remer became more secure than any Führer before at the start of their reign, Hitler had to deal with the establishment, Hess had to deal with opposition within the party and military, Goebbels had to deal with the SS, the Party and the almighty corporate structures, Speer, if one would count him, had no power at all in practice and he realized that in his first and only meeting, but Remer? The Volkssturm was crushed and it's remnants were shattered by the Russians themselves, and the Russian invasion, the first time that German soil was struck in decades by a land invasion by a threatening horde, ensured that all would look up to the Wehrmacht. The Party, the Workers, the People, every single organization in the Reich, eventually even the Volkssturm, had to turn to him and his Steel Legion to safeguard them from a vengeful slavic horde arisen from the history books.
The scale of the Mobilization was practically unmatched in German history, the rapid advance, the tens of thousands of refugees arriving on a weekly basis to tell stories of terror gave a propaganda coup that even Goebbels was never able to match: The idea of defending the Fatherland from a real threat, not the small state of Israel, but of the largest nation on Earth extending from the Volga to the pacific. A people who spent years under the thumb of a heavy regime of propaganda that was now whipped into a frenzy to face their old foe in the east and protect the conquests of the previous generation. There was a considerable amount of revisionism in the Reich as well at the time, the Ural War seen more and more as a justified preemptive strike which was now vindicated by the Russian show of force, a nation long underestimated which was believed by Goebbels to be unable to launch a major offensive.
The German Industry and War Machine was put into action, Martial Law was declared on the Eastern Territories through Remer's first directive that declared Germany to be in a State of Total War to repeal the Slav invasion. The recruitment centers were overflowing, especially by former Volkssturm members who appeared all too eager to continue unleashing their violent tendencies and set themselves on a better look by the new order. The mobilization across the workplace, in industries, in the fields, across all sectors and services in Germany was issued by Remer's "War Directives for the Economic Sectors" on the 12th of Wessel/February, the Home Front was placed under strict regimen not seen since the Hindenburg Program of 1916, with the government transporting millions of workers from the Baltics and Ukraine to work in the German war industry and an exception from conscription being issued to over a million German workers from industries considered vital for the war effort.
Autumn would see an enormous buildup in the German armed forces, expanding from it's previous standing army of roughly 1.9 million (including the Volkssturm) to up to 4 million by the end of that year. The recruitment driven by the patriotic fervor was only reinforced by the arrival of Eastern Germans into the Reich, seeking refuge following the Russian invasion and speaking of brutal attrocities committed by the Russians. Even with the years of propaganda, it was shocking to the German people to hear of the feats of the Russian Imperial Army which spared no person of German language, the fall of Adolfsburg being an example where the Volkssturm prisoners were taken far to the east beyond the Volga, german women would suffer several assaults with over 29 thousand rapes registered within the first four weeks of the invasion. The years of resentment among the slavs led to a widespread terror in the east among settlers, it is estimated that in just the first three months, half a million Germans would be either killed or deported to Siberia to working camps, the spreading of these stories leading to an exodus of over 3 million settlers from Moscowien alone, the majority of it's settler population.
The flight of the Germans from the east also emboldened many Slavs to begin uprisings, the abandonment of farmlands at such a hurried pace gave a power vacuum which was seized by guerrilla groups armed and supplied by the Russian Empire. From Estonia to Odessa, a generalized uprising of several groups would disrupt the German supply lines and even affect countries such as Romania and Finland, both being Pakt members which seized territory from the former Soviet Union in the days of Barbarossa. The paranoia of an uprising of "untermenschen" leading to the loss of the East was played by the government, what was at stake was the very survival of the Reich, the conquests of the previous generation and the legacy of Adolf Hitler, which brought an unprecedented level of engagement especially amongst the youth.
The meeting in Moscow during that day of false hopes was morbid and hopeless, they knew the city was in a terrible state, not that it was gone, that nothing had been left of it. They were still in denial over the reports during that meeting of the War Council, but as May was ending and summer arrived with hardened roads free of mud, the prospect of the inevitable German counter attack loomed over the heads of the leaders of the Russian Imperial Army. In that table there were men who twenty years earlier were slaughtering one another, now they could reflect and wonder if they would not have stood a better chance if they did not waste millions of lives in a pointless conflict of Russian against Russian. By some estimates they should be matching the German numbers, maybe even outnumbering them in population, but despite the aggressive policies of the last years and the arrival of millions of refugees, they were still outnumbered and also outgunned.
There were the distant sounds of the occasional rocket shell falling in the city, just a reminder that the Germans were still around and taking Moscow did not end the war. They were in what was the seat of the German Reichskommissar Siegfried Kasche, but for them it used to be the Kremlin Square, with most of it's buildings destroyed and torn down as a mere statement, this one building was the only one still standing from what used to be a seat of men like Tsar Ivan. There was Marshal Zhukov and his own "inner circle" of staffers which included mostly former Bolsheviks, there was Polkovinic (Colonel) Dimitri Volkogonov, representing Marshal Khazervsky's Southern Front, and of course there was the Tsar in one of his rare visits from across the Urals, naturally his presence there being kept a secret from the majority of the population.
Tsar Andrei was in a conflicting situation, the German losses were severe but the Russian losses were growing steadily, the territory that was reclaimed was still not what was expected and, despite the reports of unrest in the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine, the generalized uprising that he hoped had not materialized. The thoughts of everyone in that room were filled with dread over the possible results of this war, a German counter attack which could strike at any part of the Front, the entry of Turkey, Finland and Romania in the War with German forces arriving into Georgia to reinforce their defense of the Caucasus, and the looming threat that Iran would strike Azerbaijan and Central Asia brought the prospect of a war across thousands of miles extending from Karelia to the mountains of Afghanistan. What is worse, the fear of an attritional war which would stagnate both sides and bleed them dry, leaving only one solution which was the use of strategic nuclear weapons. And who knows what the communists in Peking are doing?
They would not be able to go much further, at best the coming Summer offensive could claim the remainder of the Caucasus and the Don river, perhaps even a push into Eastern Ukraine up to the Dnieper if he authorized the use of tactical bombs. But the Germans would come, they could strike on the Southern Front and push them back to Tsarintsyn, or they could strike here in the North and they would lose Moscow again. The problem was to gamble where the German forces would come first and then deploy the reserves accordingly. He was really not made for the military life, he wanted to be a painter, ironically enough, and ended up the Autocrat of a Nation. He was too old to be making mistakes like this, like throwing himself into this war, but what other choice did they have? Wait for the Germans to strike first and end up with everything West of the Urals set to burn in flames? Besides, it was still worth a shot, reports were coming of millions of lives who lived in absolutely brutal positions as serfs to a chaste of German overlords, or of families slaughtered to make way to German settlements and towns, now all those lives were safe, there were entire caravans being evacuated to the east during this war, the longer they could hold, more would be saved, even if they did not keep their gains.
But now, summer had arrived and they still had the initiative, they had to preempt the German assault and force the Wehrmacht to be on the defensive, you simply cannot give the initiative to the Germans, ever, they had to keep it no matter the cost.
"You are authorized, may God have mercy on our souls."
He turned his eyes to the men at the table, all had awaited to hear those words from him, Volkogonov had a subtle sigh, Zhukov was rubbing his forehead in worry, the entire staff knew that this was a path with no return, but the conversation was not over yet.
"Furthermore, you are commanded to scorch the land if you retreat, make use of all means to ensure the Germans will not enjoy any handful of dirt that they claim, just as a precaution and only after the locals are evacuated."
"Unternehmen Ludendorff" was the German plan for counter offensive which concentrated it's efforts in the Caucasus, with the objective of pushing the Russian forces from Krasnodar and back to Astrakhan, cutting off the Russian forces in Azerbaijan and reclaiming the Grozny oilfields. A buildup of Forces was prepared from Rostov to Yerevan with the arrival of the German forces in Syria with an auxiliary force of 70 thousand Turkish troops, thousands of them being conscripted by the Germans themselves on the way to Georgia through Kurdistan and Trabzon. In total, Remer would gather a force of 1.3 million soldiers including Romanians, Hungarians, Turks, Bulgarians, even Syrians, as well as recruiting local Ukrainian collaborators in an attempt to shore up the numbers when facing the Russian Southern Front of Vladimir Khazervsky which numbered 1.7 million men. In an attempt to even the gap, the Führer would also authorize the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons by the Luftwaffe, which were already being unofficially used against massed Russian formations since February, furthermore the deployment of Atomtruppen units would be built up to engage against Russian armored forces and defenses.
The launching of Operation Ludendorff would happen on the 19th of June of 1966 with an initial barrage which included the deployment of 13 nuclear bombs ranging from 5 to 40 kilotons, as well as a central push from Krasnodar to Stavropol. Further north in Rostov, the Russian forces launched their own offensive in an attempt to sever the most important land connection of the Reich with the Caucasus, the city of Rostov, 3 atomic warheads would be fired at the outskirts of the city on the 21st, preempting the own German counter attack as Field Marshal Eberbach's forces suffered a crippling loss to the Russian atomic arsenal which resulted in the Germans later dispersing their armored formations further before the battle. Following that, Khazervsky's assault would encircle the city and cut off it's rail and highway connection to Crimea. The Germans would begin to deploy the use of Sarin gas against the Russian troops in an effort to blunt their offensive, yet the conflict over Rostov devolved into a brutal house-to-house fighting within the city itself as bombers dropped incendiary bombs from above.
The Battle of Rostov would rage on while the Russians were pushed out of Stavropol and Grozny was within sights of the German Army as the Wehrmacht advanced through the north of Ossetia. But when the Russian troops evacuated Grozny, the Germans would find the city deserted, with the oilfields of Chechnya set alight by the retreating Russian forces. Several dirty bombs would be deployed and spread radioactive material throughout the city the Germans once called Lindau. Remer would realize now that the war over the east was one of scorched land, one where the Russians would ensure that even if they lost, nothing of value would be left standing, and yet, even if the war would cost more than it was worth, it was a war he had to fight. He was there in the Ural War, leading the fight over Orenburg, and he knew it was easier to kill a Russian than to expect them to surrender, if any terrain was given, it was a worthless ground.
Marshal Khazervsky would launch a counter attack in the south on the 25th of July, starting the largest armored engagement in Human history on the plains of the Don region where the Cossacks once made their home. As a relief force was prepared to relieve the siege of Rostov from the South, an army gathered under Field Marshal Hubert Meyer, head of the Heer, who was put in charge of the defense of Rostow following Eberbach's death on the 12th from a Russian bombing raid in his headquarters in Krasnodar. Meyer's plan was leaked by an Ukrainian in his staff who was responsible for cleaning up his office room, with the German operational plan being delivered to the Russian Headquarters in Tsarintsyn. The Battle of Verblyud (formerly Zernograd in Soviet times) would see over 2 thousand tanks of different types engaging across the battlefield as the Russian defenses were assaulted by the Wehrmacht, the battle gaining more and more scale as both sides diverted forces (including of the planned German offensive to Dagestan and the Russian offensive towards the Donbass) to fight over the surroundings of Rostow which had become the largest battle in Human history up to that point, with the German fronts in the Caucasus and Ukraine committing a force of 1.3 million troops over the next four months against 2 million Russians who fought over the mouth of the Don River. The deployment of Nuclear Weapons in the battle of Verblyud by both sides led to heavy losses as the tank crews would end up burning within the steel coffins which shielded them from the worst of the radiation only for the heat to lead to their deaths. In some cases, the metal hatchets of the tanks would be melted down with the crews still alive, leading to agonizing deaths which could last for hours or even days.
Over the summer, the main German engagement was fought over the Northern Caucasus and the Don region, but that did not mean the Northern Front did not see fighting as Zhukov's front-wide offensive continued on. Viazma and Kaluga, or at least what used to be those cities, would see major engagements between Russian and German troops as Field Marshal Tolsdorff fought a brutal war against the Russian offensives with even less restraint than Marshal Meyer. One example of the scale of the confrontation was the battle of Viazma as the city was assaulted by the Russian forces in an attempt to reach Smolensk. Both sides would lose up to half a million men over the next three months with a similar number of losses in Kaluga while the Russians captured Voronezh, Tula and Belgorod, with Kharkov being shelled by Russian artillery. The Germans would resort to a desperate delaying tactic as their own forces were bolstered and a counter-insurgency campaign under Reichskommissar Kaltenbrunner was fought behind the lines.
Anthrax, Typhus, Bubonic plague, Smallpox and other diseases were researched by the Reich's scientists since long before Hitler's rise to power, while the use of Biological Weapons was prevented by Hitler and his successors up to that moment, Remer would have no weight on his consciousness against using those in a total war scenario. The first use of Anthrax was already seen in March and it became almost systematic during the summer of 1966 with the heat and the ongoing flux of refugees on both sides only helping to spread such diseases. In the last two decades, under the influence of men such as Martin Bormann, basic vaccination has been denied to tens of millions of slavs across the east and their neighborhoods and ghettos in settlements were known for terribly unsanitary conditions. Added with the generally lower rations and the constant taxing physical labor, the Eastern Slavs in the Reich were a biological time bomb. While the Russians would also begin to deploy their own biological weapons against the Germans, generally it was restrained and frowned upon by the higher command due to concerns that it would spread to the local slavs.
The so-called "Eastern Pandemic" began in the late summer of 1966 with the German use of biological weapons, although Germania claimed to have been caused by Russian weapons. The fighting over Viazma reached a point where chemical and atomic armaments were seen as merely localized tools to stop the advance. Marshal Tolsdorff would authorize, under Remer's command, the deployment of Anthrax in a massive scale against the Russian troops in an attempt to cripple their logistical lines and their medical corps, which would weaken the offensive in the long-term. The Russians would answer the next day with the bombing of the German positions with Phosgene Gas, White Phosphorus and Napalm, as well as the use of depleted uranium in artillery shells, but the damage was done once a column of refugees was escorted by soldiers, some of them infected by the German "Plague cocktail" that went beyond even anthrax. These refugees would spread to others in the Russian side of the line while many partisans, in their way to replinish their supplies, would be infected and spread the diseases on the German lines. By 1967, from Karelia to Baku, from Riga to Samara, the entire vast extension of Eastern Europe was suffering with the largest plague outbreak in European History since the Black Death.
The German suppression of partisans in the East was pursued with a ruthless effectiveness in massacring the largest amount of human beings possible at the slightest suspicion of partisan behavior. Kaltenbrunner, Reichskommissar of Ostland and a veteran of the RSHA, would be put in charge of the "Cleansing operations" in Ukraine, Moscowien and Ostland. One key advantage which greatly increased the German effectiveness in combating partisans over the years was the systematic break of coordination between the several ethnic and linguistic groups in Eastern Europe. Population transfers, Ethnic cleansing, the Hunger Plan and the sordid program of de-facto slavery created by the Generalplan Ost would be perfected over the years in order to break up the connection of the locals with the land they inhabited for centuries. Millions of Ukrainians, for instance, would be deported to places such as the former Belarus, Estonia, Pskov and Central Russia, which added to the German "Special Policy for the Education of Slavs", deliberately would work to strip them of their identities and idioms while mixing different peoples inside large ghettos where the only common language was German. The slaughtering of millions of members of the Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Tartar intelligentsia would cripple the intelectual and cultural basis which sustained the continued existence of said cultures, as well as the systematic persecution of the Orthodox Church, seen since 1948 as a tool of the Tsarist regime.
The lack of a proper unity between the different rebel groups, the lack of knowledge of the local terrain in the case of many of them who were transported across vast distances during the Goebbels regime, the linguistical challenges and the advancement of German counter-insurgency tactics which included the population control of the slavs would lead to the failure in materializing a proper coordinated uprising in the German lines which many partisans under orders from Yekaterinburg had hoped for. The spread of the Pandemic which disproportionally affected the slavs, as well as the use of chemical weapons and incendiary bombs across Eastern Europe led to the defeat of the slavic groups with most of the resistance behind the German lines being crippled by 1967 and easing the flow of supplies and men to the frontlines as the Linz Pakt itself mobilized for war.
Expeditionary forces of varying levels were sent by the Vassal States of the Reich in an attempt to win over the favor of the new Führer. Farinacci, despite the continued fight in Eastern Africa, would send a force of over 300 thousand Italian soldiers to the Eastern Front, but that was not the largest contribution as Finland and Romania, both nations which participated in the spoils of Operation Barbarossa, deployed their military forces in order to directly engage the Russians in Onega and the Ukrainian-Caucasian front respectively. The French State under Schweizer proved to be the largest contributor with half a million Frenchmen being sent to the East during the war as part of the heavily propagandized "Defense of Europe". The Pakt would greatly increase the efforts, once suppressed by Goebbels, to showcase itself as a Pan-European force that united the continent against outside threats from the rampaging Russian Hordes to the Judeo-Capitalist western powers. Schweizer, who was the foremost proponent of this approach in the Continent since Almirante's death, was all too eager to show his commitment by sending in what he called "The Army of New Europa" to the East, a force of volunteers committed to the Pan-European ideals at least in theory. Both the Spanish and Portuguese offered to contribute with forces to continue the garrison of the western defenses in the abscence of German troops, the Hungarians would send a force of 80 thousand men, mostly due to the fact Romania was contributing towards the War Effort. The Croats would assume the duty of German garrisons in the Balkan peninsula such as in Prinzeugenstadt so that local forces could be sent to the East.
Rostow and Viazma proved to be the maximum extension of the Russian campaign and, by the time the winter arrived, Eastern Europe was in tatters, the liberal use of atomic weapons in the battlefields, the spread of the deathly Eastern Pandemic would cripple the civilian populations on both sides and forced the Russians to curtail most of the flow of refugees from the conquered lands. Rostov would be finally taken by the Russian Army in October of 1966, but less than two months later, the Russian army would have to abandon the city due to the German counter offensive in the Donbass which pushed Khazervsky's forces from the Don Estuary and back to Voronezh, reconnecting the German forces in the Caucasus with the main front, but all that was left of the city was a pile of ash and ruins with the soil contaminated by chemical components that made the surrounding area infertile for agriculture.
This would be the standard in 1967 as the Pakt forces would push the Russians in a slow but steady manner from the invaded territory, the Tsar's directives were put in effect for the scorched land to be set in motion. What followed was an act of systematic destruction of every city, settlement, farmland or infrastructure which could be left behind, most dramatic of them being the destruction of Moscow in March, just a year after it's capture. After months of intense fighting west of the city, the threat of encirclement led Zhukov to abandon the city, this time without Stalin to prevent him from saving his army's remnants, then, three nuclear devices were dropped in Wesselstadt, destroying the capital of the Reichskommissariat. Furthermore, the water barriers and canals of the city would be sabotaged and, as a result, much of what was left of the irradiated ruin of concrete buildings was deep inside a lake.
Other cases of scorched earth were Baku and Adolfsburg. The largest oil producing city of the Reich was near capture in May with the Russian forces bottled in the peninsula, under the command of Marshal Khazervsky, Baku would be deliberately destroyed by the retreating Russians, with the oilfields set on fire and the instalations destroyed, it would take months for the fields to be operational again. Tsarintsyn, which was once named after Stalin and then after Hitler, would be torn down by the retreating Russian forces just a month later as they set up defences on the eastern bank of the Volga, halting the German advance across the river both in there and in Astrakhan.
It would still take several months until the Russian forces were pushed back near the Volga, but the cost quickly came to Germania, a year of Wartime Economy after the Angriff had already dealt a terrible blow and the Eastern Pandemic also led to the irrecoverable loss of much of the Slavic workforce in the east, adding in millions of those who escaped to the East during the war, the result showed that continuing the war with Russia would bring the Reich to a breaking point. Remer needed to restore order and stability at home after the gruesome reign of Goebbels, which was impossible in the "Total War" situation Germany was. In Russia, there was no desire to continue the offensive after the failure of Operation Poltava, as a matter of fact there was the fear of a German invasion. The millions of refugees, the fears that the Eastern Pandemic could spread to Siberia and the loss of the majority of the army's offensive capabilities led to many requests for the Tsar to sue for peace.
It would come on the 11th of September of 1967, through a meeting mediated between the Russian and German embassies in Dublin once again, the meeting this time was arranged between Tsar Andrei and Otto Remer themselves as a ceasefire was ordered on the 4th of September. The meeting happened in the Irish City with both the German Führer and the Russian Tsar traveling there to agree to put an end to the conflict after both sides already took turns in breaking the de facto ceasefire established in 1943. Both sides would claim victory, both sides would be defeated. The Ostkrieg, or Eastern War, lasted a year and a half, being perhaps the deathliest conflict in history in a "day by day" scale. The Russians claimed victory as they managed to push the Germans beyond the Volga, reclaiming Kazan, Archangelsk, Samara, Nizny Novgorod, Vologda, Kostroma and Saransk as well as rescuing an estimated 13 to 15 million civilians from the German captivity in the East either by directly reclaiming the territory during the war or smuggling civilians during the chaotic period. The Germans also would claim victory as the great majority of their previous territory was reclaimed, with the dreaded "slavic horde" crippled for at least another generation, the inter-European partnership of the Linz Pakt was strengthened as the Pakt members rallied behind a common leadership and the Pan-European ideals became more popular, and Remer's own rule over the Reich was consolidated.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner cynically claimed that "this war was the greatest bliss which could be given to the Reich" when he saw the numbers of the losses in the East. It is estimated that between 2 and 3 million Germans died (not including over half a million losses for other Pakt members), more than those killed during the Second World War, but the death toll among the slavs was staggering. Between the brutal cleansing campaign, the exploitation of millions of workers into the brutal war economy, the widespread use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the scorched land tactics, the widespread and deathly pandemic of biological agents, and the escape of millions to the east, the Reich would lose an estimated force of 35 to 40 million Slavs in the East, roughly half of it's population, which only worsened the economic prospects in one hand, but also eliminated the greatest obstacle to the German colonial efforts. While in the short term Germany would suffer a catastrophe, this was considered a bliss in disguise for the leadership in Germania, marking this as a the last test which consolidated the German rule over Eastern Europe.
And so would come to an end the Third Russo-Nazi War, the Ostkrieg, and the deathliest war in European history. From Rostov to Haldersburg (Leningrad), from Riga to Baku, the entire of Eastern Europe would be reshaped in a permanent scale with an act of depopulation unseen in Eurasia since the Mongol era. The fields in what was once one of the most fertile lands in the world, the Don basin and the Kuban region, being poisoned by chemical and biological agents. Entire oil and gas fields were set alight, almost a hundred nuclear weapons of varying scales were used by both armies in an almost trivial way as if it was only yet another weapon. Biological agents such as Anthrax and Typhus would cause the deathliest plague in Europe since the Black Death. The two most powerful armies in the world, armed with openly genocidal rhetoric and weapons of mass destruction, made the fields of the East into their playground and the locals paid the price. The Russians would lose between 4 and 5 million soldiers, the equivalent of their entire initial invasion force, although their population would end up increasing by the end of the war after the rescue of 15 million slavs from the clutches of the Reich. The Linz Pakt would lose over 3 million soldiers, with the civilian loss of German civilians, mostly of eastern colonists, reaching between 1 and 1.5 million. The Slavs, the local inhabitants of the land over centuries, after two decades being deliberately weakened both physically and mentally into a chaste of serfs by the Hooked Cross, saw the greatest loss as between 20 and 25 million of them would die between 1966 and 1968, only speeding up the German plans to colonize the East.
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