The Third Reich of Struggle

  On November 20th in the early morning, a long-awaited northwest wind blew across Lake Ladoga, with cold and biting weather, and ice had already formed along the lake's edge.

  The OKH, the High Command of the German Army, in Zossen southeast of Berlin, code-named "Maybach 1" for external use. Li arrived early and had to wait for half an hour before Brauchitsch and Halder entered the command center, where they saw Hitler sitting in front of a large map table.

  Once the main personnel of the Army General Command and the General Staff had arrived, Li De asked straightforwardly: "Due to the mistake and concealment of Leeb, the commander of the Northern Front Group, the Soviet army recovered Tikhvin. What measures did the army take in response?"

  Brauchitsch stated that an infantry division had been hastily moved from France as reinforcements, and requested the Führer's agreement to move a panzer division northwards from Army Group Centre.

  "Summoned from France? Not only will distant water not solve the near thirst, but these troops will be defeated soon after arriving at the battlefield: either by the Soviet army or by the severe cold."

  Halder looked at the Führer with a sly gaze, apparently he had heard something and asked if the Führer had come up with a plan to defeat the enemy.

  Lee De-yang proudly announced: "In the past few days, I have not been idle. When you were all busy with the second attack on Moscow, when General Leb was stubbornly refusing to listen to advice, I had already ordered Heppner to make preparations early. Now everything is ready and a deadly counterattack will be launched soon."

  "When?" asked Brauchitsch and Halder in unison.

  "Now. At once." Li De slammed his palm on the table, and with a look of determination, picked up the red phone: "Hepner, I command: advance to the Svir River!"

  "Heppner passed down the Führer's order: 'I command: advance on the Svir River!'"

  The order was copied and pasted from level to level, all the way down to the 5th Tank Battalion of the Armored Vanguard. The battalion commander, Andrei, called out from inside his tank: "Attention, all companies! I am now transmitting the Supreme Commander's order: Advance towards the Svir River!"

  In the quiet forest, a black smoke suddenly rose, accompanied by the roar of the engine, forty III and IV tanks thundered out of the forest, knocking down trees as thick as bowls, rolling over frozen rivers, and rushing north. Behind the tank were more than a dozen assault guns, and behind them were dense infantry.

  The tank battalion burst out of the forest and arrived at a frozen small river. The anti-tank guns hidden behind the oil pine trees on the opposite bank opened fire, and the first tank caught fire, causing the ammunition compartment to explode. The turret flew into the air and then fell heavily into the ice river, disappearing in the water in an instant, leaving only half of the gun barrel pointing towards the sky.

  Shells exploded non-stop, dense hail of bullets poured on the tank, hitting the armor plate with a loud noise like firecrackers. The density of the hail was so high that it even damaged the periscope of the command tank. Andri's anger burned: A few days ago, he was assigned here from the central line, and Hapner personally ordered him to fight in the front row, he wanted to make a show for them to see.

  He vented his pent-up anger on the enemy who dared to stand in their way. Andrei refused a series of lengthy detours and flanking maneuvers against the enemy, stuck half his body out of the turret and ordered the Germans to advance at full speed.

  The tank roared across the river, and the assault gun pounded the opposite bank, causing trees to fall and branches to fly. Smoke filled the air as infantrymen advanced in groups of three or five, dodging bullets and artillery fire. The commander of the attached reconnaissance company concentrated his entire 5-centimeter mortar platoon for close-range firing, gradually weakening the enemy's firepower on the opposite bank. The forward outpost reported that the enemy had already fled northward.

  Dozens of Soviet corpses and wounded men were left on the battlefield, as well as several PM-38 120mm mortars and two 76mm anti-tank guns lying askew on the ground. The cost was two tanks destroyed and a dozen or so casualties. The company commander stopped, pulled out a small flask, took a swig, and when he went to take another drink, the flask was snatched away from him. Andrei smashed the flask against the tank and then ordered the advance to continue. By four o'clock in the afternoon, Andrei's troops had pushed north thirteen kilometers, crossing the Shaksi River. The main force followed close behind, rushing towards the Svir River a hundred kilometers away.

  This time the attack was different from before, there were no swarms of planes covering, nor were there tanks crawling over in a dense manner. The German army formed hundreds of combat groups, like streams flowing northward, and also like countless daggers, traversing this area filled with rivers, marshes, sparse roads, and snowy forests. The troops stretched out their tentacles everywhere like an octopus; when the front troops were blocked by the enemy, the rear ones bypassed them; when one side was surrounded by the Soviet army, the other side crossed over the battlefield that was still being fought. A motorized detachment was annihilated, but more tanks carrying infantry, armored vehicles, tracked motorcycles or wearing snowshoes on their feet continued to advance.

  At the same time, several small groups consisting mainly of Russian volunteers and prisoners of war who had undergone rigorous training infiltrated the Soviet lines. These included Kalmyk units in Brandenburg uniforms.

  While Andrei and the main force of the 41st Army advanced northward, the 8th Division of the 41st Army, in coordination with the 1st Army, launched a powerful right hook at the Soviet 54th Army.

  Since the 14th, the Soviet army has advanced dozens of kilometers to the south and is attacking Kirishi repeatedly without success. The main force is concentrated in the area from Grazhovo to Kirishi, as a result, the troops on the Soviet rear line from Grazhovo to Volkhov are empty. The German 8th Division set out from the bridgehead east of Prusen and went straight to the new Ladoga port 38 kilometers away, cutting off the Soviet army's southward breakthrough.

  New Ladoga is a town in Leningrad Oblast, founded by Peter the Great in 1704. It is located at the confluence of the Volkhov River and Lake Ladoga, 121 km east of Leningrad. In September 1941, after the German 18th Army blocked Leningrad from land, supplies were transported through Tikhvin and the Volkhov Railway to Novaya Ladoga, where they were loaded onto ships and sent across Lake Ladoga to Leningrad.

  On the second day of the offensive, German vanguard appeared in the southeast of Novaya Ladoga. The port was piled high with supplies, and Soviet troops were ordered to pour gasoline on the flour, preparing to set it on fire as soon as they saw a shadow of Germans. At this time, some "internal troops" appeared, sneaking around nearby, and when the Soviet troops guarding the supplies showed signs of blowing up the port and destroying the supplies, the "internal troops" immediately opened fire on them and merged with the German troops that followed, taking possession of the rescued supplies as their own.

  This "Internal Affairs Troop" is led by bespectacled university students as the "Red Hunter" strike force.

  On the 21st afternoon, Major General Brandenberger, commander of the 8th Division of the 41st Army, reported to Heppner with great excitement: "The German army entered Novaya Ladoga, cutting off the main reinforcement route for Leningrad, and surrounded the Soviet 54th Army layer by layer, capturing 550 tons of flour and weapons and ammunition."

  ……

  This is a contest of wills. For days, in the season where water freezes into ice, the German army under Hube has been advancing northwards through wind and snow, with only one wish in their hearts - to head north, to meet up with the Finnish troops on the banks of the Svir River 100 kilometers away, and thus completely encircle Leningrad.

  This is the collision of steel. In the overcast sky, German planes and Soviet planes are fighting in mid-air. Dozens of armored trains slowly moved north along the railway on the east coast of Lake Ladoga, hundreds of tanks opened roads in dense forests, wilderness, and peat bogs, thousands of armored vehicles and self-propelled artillery followed the tanks with difficulty, tens of thousands of trucks and horse-drawn carts advanced with a low hum on frozen hard roads, forest trails, and icy roads. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were divided into hundreds of combat groups, advancing and dividing Mereetskov's hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops into hundreds of pieces. At least 5,000 German and Allied troops disguised as Soviet troops infiltrated deep behind enemy lines, turning the rear of the Soviet Seventh Army upside down, with smoke and flames everywhere.

  On November 27, the temperature dropped over 20 degrees in two hours. Despite Hepner's collection of most winter clothing and winter lubricants, the German army advancing north was tormented by the extreme cold and had to advance desperately.

  The next day, in the howling wind, several German tanks, hastily whitewashed with white lime powder, charged into Sviritsa at the confluence of the Svir, Oyat and Pasha rivers, and rushed across the river to the Svir River.

  The Soviet Ladoga Flotilla added insult to the injury of these invasion forces: 100mm naval gunfire accurately landed around the German troops, blasting tanks into scrap metal.

  The Soviet snowmobiles sped across the ice, firing at the infantry following behind the tanks, even chasing them onto the shore, like a snow leopard pursuing rabbits, sending the German soldiers fleeing in all directions, their ears plugged and unable to hear the sounds. Those who ran slower were beheaded by the massive propellers of the snowmobiles, with blood and flesh flying everywhere, bodies torn apart, and the ice was covered with mangled flesh and brains splattered with red and white.

  The Führer watched their actions at all times, the German army was blocked in Sviritsa and enraged him, he quickly ordered the 1st Air Fleet, the German 5th Air Force to fully support, Li De also sent the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command, Keitel to Finland to coordinate the actions of the two armies.

  The German army and the Soviet army fought bitterly for a day, ten kilometers to the north was the Finnish army's defense line, but they refused to actively move south to meet with the German army that had suffered greatly. They were only satisfied with recovering the territory taken by the Soviet Union a year ago.

  Under the pressure of the leader, the Finnish army also made a statement: they dispatched a few poor gunboats to challenge the powerful Soviet Ladoga Lake Fleet, and even appeared the spectacle of gunboats driving away Soviet warships with cannon fire; dispatched the Finnish Air Force to support, collected leather jackets accumulated on the Vira River, just waiting for the German army to take them.

  In an emergency, the German 163rd Infantry Division, belonging to the Finnish Karelian Army Group, launched a southward attack across the Svir River, and under the cover of cloud-like aircraft, met with scouts from the 41st Motorized Division coming from the south.

  At 9:40 on November 29, 1941, just as the sun rose, the Hepna armored troops advancing from south to north and wearing all kinds of quilted uniforms formally contacted the soldiers of the German 163rd Infantry Division advancing from north to south and wearing neat Finnish fur coats. In other words, the western German army advancing along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga was deeply surrounded by Leningrad.

  The next day, the vanguard regiment of the 3rd Motorized Division assigned to the 41st Army, under the repeated urging of Regiment Commander Andreyev, reached the location of the headquarters of the Soviet Seventh Army in Lodeynoye Pole, north of which about a thousand men from the SS Death's Head Division crossed the Svir River and occupied Yanega east of the market. At dusk, Finnish troops crossed the ice, set up tables with wine and large chunks of venison, lit huge bonfires and revelled through the night, sending warmth to the shivering visitors on the south bank. The German army also closed in on the second encirclement around Leningrad and Lake Ladoga to the east. The fate of Leningrad was sealed, it was only a matter of time.

  While the two German armies in the west were reporting rapid advances, the eastern army was still struggling hard. As General von Manstein put it, "we are wiping our behinds." But this behind had too many thorns: The 56th Army, which had been ordered to retake Tikhvin and advance northward, was surrounded by no less than fifteen Soviet divisions. The Germans hugged their heads and struggled northward with all their might, but sixty kilometers north of Tikhvin they could move no further. They drew most of the Soviet forces onto themselves, bearing the brunt of the enemy's relentless counterattacks on the broad front to the east and southeast, and secured the right flank of the 41st Army.

  On December 1, 1941, Lee spoke in the Berlin Reichstag, claiming that Leningrad was completely surrounded. His sarcastic tone brought laughter from the members of parliament and the audience, perhaps he wanted to add some humor to Sunday: "... at this moment, Mr. Stalin, who is named after steel, is angry with his army, which is like tofu dregs, or maybe he is throwing a stack of defeat reports on the face of a certain marshal... but I ask you to remain calm, what is needed for victory is fighting spirit, not anger, spitting on the face of defeated generals has no benefit to the entire war situation... as long as you calm down and put yourself in your own situation, you will find that surrender is the only choice..."

  There is one thing he said wrong: Stalin punished defeated generals, not just by spitting in their faces...