Chapter 690: The Great Siege - Ukrainians
"Your Excellency, the Imperial Marshal, I am Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, a sniper from the sniper company of the 14th SS "Ukrainian" Panzergrenadier Division."
A sweet-looking SS female soldier in her twenties, whose posture and military appearance were almost perfect, strode up to Hersman, stood at attention, and then gave him a German salute, introducing herself in fluent German.
"What? What?" Hersman's eyes, which were already wide open, were almost popping out.
A female SS combat soldier, this was enough to surprise Hersman, and now he was stunned to hear that this Ukrainian female soldier was actually named Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
Is this really the base of the 14th SS "Ukrainian" Panzergrenadier Division? How could a Soviet heroine be here?
"Marshal of the Reich, Private Pavlichenko performed outstandingly in the Battle of Lviv, fought on the front line for 46 days, and was confirmed to have killed 39 Soviet officers and soldiers. He has been awarded a first-class Iron Cross."
Reinhard Heydrich, the Chief Minister of Western Ukraine and Vice Chairman of the Western Ukrainian Defense Committee, was with Hessmann. It was he who arranged for the Reich Marshal to come and award the battle heroes of the 14th SS Ukrainian Division today. The heroine Pavlichenko is a typical example of Heydrich's single-handed support.
The 14th SS "Ukrainian" Division where Pavlichenko was located performed as well in the Battle of Lviv as the 5th SS "Viking" Division in the Battle of Warsaw, so it was upgraded from an infantry division to an armored grenadier division.
In the Battle of Lviv, a group of battle heroes emerged in the 14th SS Division, and Pavlichenko, who was "specially approved" to join the army by Heydrich, was one of them.
This woman actually killed 39 people... It's enough to get the first-class Iron Cross, but the Knight's Cross is still a little short. However, in order to set an example, a discount price must be given. Hersman looked at Pavlichenko again and found that she was looking at him with admiration and a little trepidation. So he smiled and said, "Private, are you a member of the National Socialist Workers' Party?"
"Yes, I am a member of the National Socialist Workers' Party. I joined the party organization at the National University of Kiev."
Pavlichenko actually became a Nazi... This world is really ruined for me. Hersman nodded, took a Knight's Cross from his adjutant Stauffenberg, and personally hung it on the collar of the heroine Pavlichenko.
...
"How are the Ukrainians?"
Hersman asked Heydrich on the way back to the city of Lviv from the base of the 14th "Ukrainian" Panzer Grenadier Division of the SS.
"They are all very good soldiers, loyal and trustworthy." Heydrich said with a smile, "Although they are not as good as the Germans, and perhaps not as good as the volunteers in Western and Northern Europe, they are much better than the Poles. Reich Marshal, I think we should no longer regard the Ukrainian soldiers who participated in the Lviv battle as the defense force, but as the National Defense Force."
"National Defense Force?" Hessman seemed to be interested, "Can they fight like the National Defense Force?"
In the military sector of the German Empire today, the defense force is equivalent to the militia, and its weapons and equipment and training requirements are much worse than those of the National Defense Force. In addition, the mission of the defense force is to defend the homeland, and in principle it will not go abroad to fight.
"Maybe it's still a little worse," Heydrich smiled, "but the Ukrainians are very enthusiastic, they all want to regain lost territory and are willing to fight for us. The most important thing is that they have mobilized and organized an army of 600,000 people! And most of them belong to the front-line combat troops, and many of them have experienced the baptism of the bloody battle of Lviv."
Although the intensity of the bloody battle of Lviv is not as fierce as the Battle of Warsaw, it is also a large battle with more than one million people participating, which can indeed train new recruits.
"What do General Busch and General Hausser think?" Hessmann asked.
General Ernst Busch is now the commander of the 4th Army of the German Wehrmacht (not the 4th Panzer Army), and General Paul Hausser is the commander-in-chief of the Western Ukrainian Defense Army. The Battle of Lviv was fought under the joint command of the two of them.
"They have the same view," Heydrich told Hessmann, "They both think that if we can equip these defense forces with some French artillery, assault guns and trucks, we can reorganize them into the Wehrmacht and let them fight on the right bank of Ukraine after the decisive battle on the Belarusian side is won or lost."
"Warp on the right bank of Ukraine in the muddy season and winter?" Hessmann raised his eyebrows.
There was a plan to liberate the right bank of Ukraine with Ukrainians, but in that plan, the Ukrainians were not the main force, but the assistants. Now Busch and Haussmann may have realized the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainians in the Battle of Lviv, so they want them to fight as the main force, and they also want to march in the muddy season and winter.
"The winter and mud in Ukraine cannot stop the Ukrainians themselves, because they belong to this land, and everyone on this land will give their all to support their own soldiers."
The Ukrainian winter certainly won't freeze the Ukrainians to death. The real threat of mud and cold winter is the difficulty of logistics and transportation. But as long as the right-bank Ukrainian people are willing to support the German Wehrmacht composed of Ukrainians, the difficulty of logistics supply will be greatly alleviated.
Heydrich finally said with confidence: "As long as we can win in Belarus and make a gesture of attacking Moscow, we can mobilize the enemies of Ukraine to go north, and then dispatch the national defense forces composed of Ukrainians, we will definitely win in Ukraine on the right bank. "
If Marshal Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, the commander of the Southwest Front of the Soviet Red Army, heard what Heydrich said, he would definitely sneer at it. Because he is a right-bank Ukrainian, he was born in Odessa, close to Romania, but he supports the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Party 10,000%.
He felt very sad about the desperate resistance of his unscrupulous compatriots in Lviv, and he was fully aware that there were still many reactionary elements among the Ukrainians on the right bank.
"Comrade Secretary, it is very likely that the enemy will invade Right Bank Ukraine soon. We must be prepared. The situation in Right Bank Ukraine is likely to change."
When Timoshenko, who returned to Kiev in despair, spoke to Mikhail Alexeevich Burmishtenko, the new political commissar of the Southwest Front and the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party, his voice Husky and low.
"It can't be changed! Right-bank Ukraine will always belong to the Soviet power." Burmishtenko seemed very confident. The struggle to defend Right Bank Ukraine is also of great significance to him, because he is a very young senior cadre, only 40 years old this year, as young as Belarus's first secretary Ponomarenko. Being the number two man in Ukraine at such an age, his future is naturally limitless. And he is now lucky enough to have replaced Ukraine's First Secretary Khrushchev as the military commissar of the Southwest Front.
Khrushchev seemed to be very unlucky. Originally, after the Battle of Lviv, the Military Commissar of the Western Front was replaced, and it was Khrushchev's turn. However, Stalin happened to think of setting up a general headquarters at this time. Marshal Voroshilov became the commander-in-chief of the northwest direction, and his partner was Political Bureau member Zhdanov. As Marshal Budyonny became the commander-in-chief of the southwest, he naturally needed a qualified military commissar, so Khrushchev was transferred from Kiev to partner with Budyonny. So the Military Commissar of the South-Western Front "luckily" fell on the young Burmishtenko.
"By the way, the Western Army and the Belarusian Front are now preparing to defend Warsaw, Brest, Minsk and Smolensk. Are our Southwest Front preparing to defend Kiev?"
Timoshenko and Burmishtenko chatted for a while, but suddenly the conversation changed and they raised the issue of preparing for the defense of Kiev.
"Defend Kiev?" Burmishtenko was stunned. "Comrade Commander, what are you talking about? Kiev is 500 kilometers away from Lviv. How can the enemy reach Kiev? And it is already late August. "October is the mud season and winter will begin in November. How can Kiev be in danger?"
What Burmishtenko said made sense, but Timoshenko was always a little uneasy. His Southwestern Front was in bad shape and had been demoralized after withdrawing from Lviv. Three more elite group armies with large numbers of mechanized troops were transferred away, and their strength also appeared weak.
Moreover, according to the orders of the Supreme Command, the main task of the Southwest Front is to monitor the enemies of Lviv, while covering the direction of Belarus, and to defend the border with Romania to prevent the enemy from invading Ukraine from Romania.
In other words, the Southwest Front Army must use less than 900,000 troops to complete three very difficult tasks at the same time.
At the same time, there are still huge hidden dangers behind them - right-bank Ukraine is now full of lurking anti-G-revolution elements, who are ready to move and prepare to cooperate when the German army invades. These Ukrainian anti-revolutionary elements are also the reason why Burmishtenko is unwilling to prepare for war in Kiev with great fanfare.
Because preparing for war in Kiev is tantamount to admitting that the Red Army is facing defeat, which will greatly encourage the anti-G revolution elements in Ukraine (actually the people on the right bank of Ukraine who do not know the truth), and maybe there will be some uprisings or something. If things get serious, he, the second secretary of Ukraine, will move as soon as he wants. In fact, the reason why he became the second secretary of Ukraine at such a young age was not because he was particularly loved by Stalin, but because Ukraine (referring to left-bank Ukraine) was the hardest-hit area of the Great Purge. There are no senior cadres in the country, and in order to maintain national autonomy, it is the turn of young cadres like Burmishtenko to flourish...