Chapter 632 Heavy Thunderstorm 20

On June 6, June 7 and June 8, the Warsaw front seemed relatively calm. Neither the German army nor the Soviet army launched an offensive, but instead rushed to deploy troops.

Although the German 6th Army received a lot of reinforcements, it would take a few days for these troops to arrive. Before that, Model could only be patient and continue to be a turtle in Warsaw.

For the Soviet army, the most important thing now is to open up the railway and main highway traffic lines from Brest to Warsaw. In this way, more troops and supplies can be transported to the Warsaw front at the fastest speed.

At the same time, such a straight line of traffic is also very easy to protect, much easier than the current winding traffic lines.

Therefore, Comrade Solzhenitsyn's 4th Army was sent to attack another ring fortress. However, the artillery reconnaissance platoon where Solzhenitsyn was located did not work as coolies to carry 203mm artillery shells this time. They got a very lucrative job, helping the comrades of the Polish Bolshevik Party to establish grassroots political power, and at the same time confiscating some horses, cattle, sheep, sausages, butter, cheese, vegetables and wine from Polish landlords and rich peasants... Well, this was not because the Red Army's logistics supply was insufficient. Now the war has just begun. No matter how bad the Soviet Union is, it will not have enough food to supply the front line now.

However, the Soviet Red Army has a tradition of confiscation. They don't say that they won't take a needle or a thread. What kind of revolution can they make if they don't take anything? So they have always received what they didn't receive wherever they fought. And how can the logistics supply be better than those confiscated in Poland? Poland has always been the granary of Europe, and there are so many delicious things!

"The village here looks very rich!" Solzhenitsyn rode a horse that was confiscated from nowhere, and walked at the front of the team with a Polish Bolshevik cadre who had just been released from a Siberian labor camp, and chatted all the way.

In the first five days before he set foot on the white Polish territory, Solzhenitsyn was busy marching and fighting, and didn't pay much attention to the Polish people in dire straits. But in the past two days, he turned to "local work" and found that the Polish rural areas west of the Bug River were very wealthy. The houses were beautifully built, the food in the house was also rich, and every household had some industrial products that looked better than Soviet goods. For example, clocks, bicycles, radios, cameras and so on.

In addition, men and women were dressed decently and had very ruddy complexions. It was impossible to tell who was the working people in dire straits.

Oh, it's not that there were no working people. Comrade Lewandowski, a cadre of the Polish Bolshevik Party who was working with Solzhenitsyn now, looked bitter and resentful. He was very thin, with prominent cheekbones on his face, a hunched back, and one arm was not very convenient. It was said that he was injured while working. Solzhenitsyn guessed that this Pole must have been a serf in the landlord's family when he was young.

"Poland is not rich at all," Lewandowski shook his head and said in a hoarse voice, "The rural areas of Switzerland are rich, you will know when Switzerland is liberated in the future."

The Swiss working people who are in dire straits must be liberated, and according to the plan, it will be after the liberation of Germany. Now the Third International is looking for Swiss revolutionaries who want to be great leaders to form the Swiss Bolshevik Party.

"Switzerland? Have you been to Switzerland?" Solzhenitsyn was stunned.

"Yes, I studied in Switzerland when I was young." Lewandowski sighed and said with some emotion, "I came into contact with Marxism at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology."

Studying in Switzerland? It turns out that they are not serfs, how can they look so progressive? Solzhenitsyn took a closer look at the Polish comrades who looked bitter and resentful.

When mentioning the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lewandowski's eyes became red for some reason, and he stopped talking, as if he was thinking of something sad. Solzhenitsyn guessed that this cadre of the Polish Bolshevik Party must have suffered a lot in Switzerland...

...

"Comrade squad leader, have you seen Warsaw?"

"Yes! I saw the buildings belonging to the city of Warsaw! Comrades, we have arrived at the city of Warsaw!"

In a small town called Suleowic, only 17 or 18 kilometers away from the center of Warsaw, Yakov Pavlov, the machine gun squad leader of the 1st Company of the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 205th Infantry Division of the Red Army, saw the city of Warsaw in the distance for the first time on the roof of a Catholic church.

The 205th Division of the Red Army, which is now assigned to the 12th Army of the Red Army, has replaced the 9th Mechanized Army and has become the vanguard of the advance towards Warsaw. Even during the period from June 6th to 8th when the main force was resting, they did not stop their pace of advancement, but advanced from Minsk in Poland to Suleowic, which can be regarded as the gateway to Warsaw. This will be the starting position for the Red Army to launch the final attack on the city of Warsaw!

Although the terrain of Sureović was important, the march to Sureović was very smooth, contrary to the expectations of the 205th Division Commander Major General Zholujev and Political Commissar Oktyabriski, with almost no resistance from the Germans. They were bombed a few times on the road, losing dozens of soldiers and a dozen vehicles. Oh, it was not that there was no resistance. When entering Sureović, a dozen vicious Polish reactionaries shot at the Red Army soldiers with rifles, killing 2 people and injuring 3 others.

The 205th Division is now searching for reactionaries throughout the city, and Pavlov's machine gun squad was ordered to break into the largest church in Suleowicz to arrest reactionaries. The Catholic forces in Poland have always been the vanguard of anti-G and anti-Soviet forces. All bishops and priests should be arrested and sent to Siberia for labor reform.

However, Pavlov and others did not catch a single charlatan in this empty cathedral. It turned out that these people had retreated under the order of the Archbishop of Warsaw.

"Comrade commander, comrade political commissar."

Pavlov was stretching his neck to see the scenery when he heard someone behind him shouting "commander" and "political commissar". He knew that the two bosses of the 205th Division must be here. He turned around and saw Major General Zholujev and Political Commissar Oktyabrski walking into his attic together. This is the commanding height of the entire Suleowicz city. Standing here, you can see many tall buildings in Warsaw.

"Salute!" Pavlov saluted, and then left quietly. He didn't dare to disturb the division commander and the political commissar to observe the enemy.

"Comrade Political Commissar, Warsaw is right in front of us!" Major General Victor Zholujew, the commander of the 205th Division, observed with a telescope for a while, and then said to Oktyabrski beside him, "What is blocking us now is a large forest... The Polish reactionaries knew that their country had no defenses, so they kept a large forest to the east of Warsaw. It's ridiculous to use trees to stop the wheel of history."

Poland is a large plain terrain, but it is not a "treeless plain", but a plain covered with forests. Before it was developed, the Polish plain was a temperate forest. The forest to the east of Warsaw has always been a place for Polish monarchs to hunt and play, so it has not been cut down on a large scale.

After Piłsudski came to power, because he knew that there would be a war between the Soviet Union and Poland, everything was national defense first, and cutting trees was no exception. The forest east of Warsaw is a "protected area" where logging is prohibited because it can protect the city of Warsaw. Moreover, in this forest east of Warsaw, Piłsudski also had a large number of fortifications built. All roads through the forest, whether highways, railways or other roads, have layers of defensive positions blocking the front.

And the Red Army Intelligence Bureau has long been aware of this situation. The road to Warsaw from the east is not easy to walk!

If the Germans are ready to defend Warsaw, then the "Warsaw Forest" will definitely be the place where the two sides will fight a bloody battle.

…

Private Willy Brandt of the 2nd Platoon, 3rd Company, 406th Regiment, 111th Infantry Division of the German Wehrmacht, was half-kneeling in an infantry fortification near the city of Suleowicz in the Warsaw Forest at this time, very depressed, holding an MKB42 automatic carbine and a cigarette in his mouth.

Unlike the high-spirited German superman warriors around him, Brandt is actually an anti-war activist. He was an illegitimate child, whose original name was Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm, and was raised by his grandfather who believed in the Social Democratic Party. Under the influence of his grandfather, he joined the Socialist Youth League at the age of 15 and became a member of the Social Democratic Party in 1930. But not long after, the German militarists joined the Nazi Party to seize power, and also passed the "Transitional Justice Regulations" to politically hunt down the anti-war Social Democratic Party and the Bolshevik Party.

Frahm, who was extremely disappointed with German politics, left Germany under the pseudonym Brandt and went to Norway to join the work of the Norwegian Workers' Party and became a journalist. He published articles in the Norwegian Workers' Newspaper to speak ill of the Hitler government. In 1937, he also participated in the Spanish Civil War as a war correspondent, reporting on the atrocities of the fascists.

However, in 1940, a situation that made him feel desperate occurred. Germany defeated France and became the master of the European continent, and the Norwegian Workers' Party was also banned by the National Unity Party that came to power in a coup. However, Brandt was not arrested, but received a conscription notice sent by the German Ministry of Defense Military Service Bureau. He originally wanted to seek asylum in Sweden, but the Swedish customs told him that he had to show a document exempting him from military service in order to enter the country legally.

In order to avoid imprisonment or being put in a concentration camp, Brandt could only report to the German Military Service Office in Norway and became a sinful Nazi German soldier. The German Military Service Office did not know that he was Brandt, an anti-war activist, but only thought that he was Fram, a German citizen living in Norway. However, if he refused to serve and was arrested, his other crimes might be exposed, and he would have to go to a concentration camp for labor reform.