Chapter 125
Chapter 125
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: The Time of Plunder (1)
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The aftermath of the Nemmersdorf propaganda completely shattered the defensive posture on the Western Front.
“Rather than hand the entire fatherland over to the Reds, wouldn’t surrendering to the West be the true path of patriotism?”
As German soldiers surrendered in droves, the Allies broke through the Siegfried Line with ease.
The Americans did suffer a bit more due to battles like Hürtgen Forest.
Still, it was a fact that they had pierced it more smoothly than expected.
“Your Excellency, it’s getting impossible to hold the front with soldiers surrendering nonstop. What should we do?”
“With even Field Marshal Rommel planning to withdraw, what can we do? We have no choice but to hold at the Rhine. Pull the troops back to the east bank of the Rhine for now.”
Even Walter Model, the masterful commander of turnarounds, had lost his fighting spirit. With the army collapsing on its own, he could offer no better plan than retreat.
Before January was even over, the Allies had seized all German territory west of the Rhine.
“We can’t fall behind either.”
When the Allies broke through the Siegfried Line sooner than anticipated, the Soviets accelerated their offensive to keep pace in the race for spoils.
After crushing Romania, the Soviet forces swept across the Balkans clockwise, invading Hungary and Yugoslavia.
“For now, all I’ll say is you’ve had a hard journey getting here, comrades.”
Yugoslavia’s leader Tito adopted an attitude that made it clear he wanted the Soviet troops—who had come to drive out the Germans—to leave his country as soon as possible.
With the Yugoslav People’s Army already swollen to nearly 800,000 strong and capable of liberating itself, they had no kind view of the Soviets committing rapes on their soil.
The Soviets didn’t appreciate Tito’s attitude either, but considering Yugoslavia’s strength, they kept their displeasure hidden.
After all, what mattered now wasn’t some ego clash—it was pushing into the German heartland.
The Soviet army struck straight for the Hungarian-Austrian border.
Hungary lacked the strength to withstand that terrifying assault.
Once the final defensive line, the Margarethe Line, crumbled, Horthy moved quickly.
“Prepare a separate peace with the Soviets by the end of this week. We don’t have time.”
The timing was perfect.
With the Western Front collapsing and Germany in chaos, even if Hungary betrayed them, Berlin couldn’t easily punish it.
That was Horthy’s calculation as regent.
But Germany still had enough strength left to punish Budapest’s betrayal.
“We don’t let traitors go unpunished.”
The moment Germany caught the whiff of Hungary’s separate peace talks, it scraped together what few troops it had and launched a surprise attack on Hungary.
Once again, Otto Skorzeny’s famed special forces unit seized Budapest in a single stroke.
“What... what are you going to do with me?”
“You’re not someone who should be in Budapest, so we’ll have to escort you to Berlin.”
Hungary’s regent Horthy was hauled off to Berlin just like that.
Thus, Horthy fell from leader of a nation to a mere hostage blocking Hungary’s betrayal.
Even this desperate German lashing out couldn’t halt the Third Reich’s sinking.
The Führer boasted of miracle weapons that could turn the tide, but either they didn’t exist, or even if they did, they couldn’t produce meaningful results against the Allies’ overwhelming material superiority.
“It’s about time the Führer changed his thinking. When will Berlin give us an answer?”
“Waiting for Führer orders is pointless. What good would they do now that everything’s over? Let’s do it our way.”
“You’re right. Then let’s start talks with the Western side.”
Germans began making contact with the Allies on an individual unit basis.
On the Italian front, SS Major General Karl Wolff struck a temporary truce with Allen Dulles, the U.S. intelligence chief.
“Whatever you do, it’s none of our business. Got it?”
“Just turn a blind eye. We’re doing this to survive.”
In exchange for the truce, the Germans handed over Rome and other central Italian cities without a fight, while the Americans tacitly allowed the SS to mop up communist reds in the north.
Separate negotiations continued in the west as well.
Friedrich Christiansen, the Dutch military governor, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, head of the Imperial Commission for the occupied Netherlands, held talks and agreed to a temporary ceasefire with the Allies.
“We’re only allowing food supplies for Dutch civilians. Nothing more. If troops move in, this truce ends immediately. Understood?”
“Agreed.”
Such ceasefires between German and Allied forces stirred the paranoid suspicions of the tyrant in the suspicious East, Stalin.
“The Western bastards might be plotting a separate peace with Germany to betray us. What’s the Korean army’s attitude?”
“The Koreans are still cooperating with us. They hand over important war criminals when we ask and don’t interfere with our occupation policies.”
“Keep watching them anyway.”
A betrayal by Korea, however unlikely, would be fatal.
The General Secretary grew obsessed with crushing Berlin before the West could harbor second thoughts.
It would be trouble if Germany and the West joined hands against the Soviets.
Best to eliminate that possibility preemptively.
“It’s about time to resume the offensive on the Polish front. Launch the assault on Berlin.”
In December 1944, the Soviets assembled 250 divisions and 4 million troops along the Warsaw-Berlin axis for the Berlin offensive.
The German forces facing this massive host were pathetically inadequate.
German High Command got a rough sense of the Soviet buildup from air reconnaissance and was terrified.
“The Ivans have gone mad.”
There was no stopping that.
How could they block it with fewer than a million men?
Even amid this, Hitler raised his voice demanding an offensive.
“The Soviets are so huge that destroying 30 divisions won’t deliver a fatal blow. But the Western Allies—if 30 divisions vanish, that’s a third of their strength gone. Hit them with a decisive strike like that, swing the main force east, and the Reich can survive!”
No one understood Hitler’s logic anymore.
Even when the Führer ordered an offensive, commanders merely went through the motions without acting.
“Will you follow the Führer’s orders?”
“Have you lost your mind? We don’t even have the troops to squeeze out for that in the first place. An offensive? Please.”
The German Wehrmacht still had 5 million troops on paper.
But many were Volkssturm made of kids and old men, and plenty were wounded.
Their equipment was dismal.
Tanks and assault guns numbered barely a thousand, and while they had plenty of aircraft, they lacked pilots and fuel.
No way could they stand against 8 million Soviets and over 3 million Allies with that.
“Wait. The front lines aren’t what matters right now.”
Suddenly, Germans remembered something they’d forgotten.
Extermination camps.
If the Allies discovered the traces of those horrific facilities turning Jews to ash, Germany would pay an unimaginable price.
“We need to dispose of the facilities quickly.”
Upon reports from his staff, SS Reich Leader Himmler ordered the camps shut down and all traces erased.
“Don’t even leave the building foundations.”
Amid the chaos, the Germans hastily began closing countless camps.
But the Soviet advance outpaced their evidence destruction.
In January 1945, the Soviets swept from the Vistula’s banks through central and western former Poland and into East Prussia.
“It’s time for revenge, you German swine.”
In the process, countless Germans were trampled.
The Soviets repaid every atrocity the Germans had committed in the USSR.
They raped women from girls to old ladies without mercy and unleashed brutal abuse and violence on the men.
“Woman, come here. Woman, we let live.”
“Kyaaak!”
“The Ivans are coming. The devils of Nemmersdorf are here!”
Fleeing Soviet retribution, Germans abandoned homes, property, and everything else, fleeing west in panic.
Those too late to escape East Prussia fled to the coast, waiting for ships west.
Over 2 million people crowded the narrow coastal strip for sea evacuation.
To rescue them, the German navy mobilized hundreds of vessels.
“It’s our time to step in.”
Yi Jeong-yun, commander of the Korean expeditionary force sailing down the Baltic coast, launched another powerful propaganda offensive.
“We are the Korean army. We hold no grudges or hatred toward Germans. Surrender to us in trust, and we guarantee your safety. If you’re worried about your families, accept our protection instead of risking the dangerous sea.”
German soldiers threw down their weapons in droves at the Korean propaganda.
They’d have fought to the end against Soviets, but Koreans were different.
The Koreans were as gentlemanly as the Western Allies—in fact, even more so.
“We’ll trust your promise. Please ensure the safety of our soldiers and civilians.”
When Königsberg’s German commander Otto Lasch surrendered, 80,000 German troops and 250,000 refugees and civilians fell into Korean hands.
“Load them all onto trains.”
The Korean government had agreed postwar that East Prussia would go to the Soviets.
In that context, evacuating East Prussia’s Germans by train was an act in service of the alliance.
“The Koreyskis sure make war easy.”
The Soviets, who’d figured it would take another two months to force those Germans to surrender, felt a bit deflated.
But it wasn’t bad.
Securing the flank faster meant they could reach the General Secretary’s goal: Berlin.
The Koreans steadily took isolated German units on Baltic sandbars and in a few cities, racking up gains.
The harvest was quite bountiful compared to the blood spilled.
‘500,000 civilians and 180,000 German troops. Not a bad profit.’
The Germans captured by Yi Jeong-yun were shipped straight to places like the Sanjiang Plain in Manchuria.
There, in exchange for conditional grants of farmland, forests, and timberlands, the Germans received daily Korean language lessons.
“Pass the Korean proficiency exam, and the granted property becomes yours. Give it a real shot in this new land.”
The Korean government planned to naturalize these Germans as Korean citizens in the long term.
There were several reasons.
First, they couldn’t ignore the benefit of expanding the talent pool with relatively well-educated Germans.
Second, bulking up the population was essential to solidify superpower status as one of the world’s top three in the Cold War.
Third, they needed a certain number of European nationals to train agents for international espionage.
Asians stuck out too much in white societies for spy work.
Fourth, to settle scientists kidnapped from Germany, forming a German community within the empire was essential.
That would make bringing their families easier.
Fifth, Eastern Germans who’d tasted the bitter fruits of militarism firsthand needed to interact with Koreans so they could feel the dangers viscerally.
Not through words, but eyes and ears.
In this way, the Korean army swept eastern Germany, steadily harvesting Germans.
In western Germany, rather than mass population sweeps, it was precise surgical strikes.
“Mr. Werner Karl Heisenberg?”
“Yes?”
“That’s him.”
“Wh-what are you doing?”
Unknown figures hooded Heisenberg and bundled him into a car.
Then vanished without a trace.
Mysterious disappearances like this cropped up across Germany.
When a wall crumbles, thieves swarm the house.
Korea was just one of many greedy thieves in the flock.