Chapter 948: Decisive Battle (15)

That day, the German army dropped a total of 30 "Grand Slam" 0 super bombs into Moscow, which collapsed or directly destroyed many underground fortifications. As mentioned above, nearly 10 million soldiers and civilians were crowded in the underground fortifications of Moscow, just like sardines in a can, which resulted in considerable casualties every time an explosion or shock affected the underground fortifications.

Just as Zhukov sighed in frustration, a staff officer hurried in to report. "Comrade Commander, there have been riots of varying degrees in many areas!"

Zhukov was extremely upset and said unhappily. "What riots?!" When he learned that many recruits could not stand the destruction of artillery fire, shot themselves or had mental breakdowns, especially when this phenomenon was more serious among ordinary civilians, his face suddenly became extremely ugly.

But he had no way to deal with this, because it was a common phenomenon for soldiers to be afraid of artillery bombardment. On the battlefield, recruits who had just entered the battlefield lacked practical experience and were most afraid of artillery. Even if they hid in solid fortifications, the huge explosions would make them afraid. Not to mention being bombarded in the wild, seeing your comrades blown to pieces will make you even more nervous, affecting subsequent combat.

For example, British soldiers who participated in the First World War said that the most unbearable thing in war was artillery fire. Ordinary infantry can only take the shells and cannot fight back. They have no choice but to find the deepest bunkers as possible to hide in and hold out until the bombardment ends.

Veterans can hold out longer than recruits under bombardment, and recruits often need veterans to encourage them. Jim Woolley, a soldier of the West Yorkshire Regiment in World War I, experienced a 4-hour bombardment. The bunker was filled with smoke and dust stirred up by the explosion of shells, and mud fell from the creaking wooden beams on the top of the bunker. "We have a new soldier who has not been with us for long. After a while, he began to sob. One of us, an old man with a son, squeezed next to the boy and stretched out his arms to hug him. After a while, the boy was fine. Things like this happen all the time."

And now Moscow has been under heavy bombardment for nearly 70 hours, and it has not stopped for a minute or a second; even he, the commander, can hardly bear it, let alone the soldiers and civilians under him.

The staff officer glanced at the commander of the American Expeditionary Force who was frowning not far away and whispered. "There are also many soldiers who committed suicide in the American Expeditionary Force."

Zhukov sighed helplessly and ordered. "Let the political commissar and political workers walk around more, and encourage and comfort soldiers who are found to be emotionally abnormal." As for ordinary people, he couldn't think of any good way. Logically, these people should have evacuated before Moscow was surrounded, but Comrade Stalin ordered that no one should leave Moscow without permission and that they should stay and live and die with Moscow, which led to this situation.

And Eisenhower was smoking his pipe one after another, inhaling and exhaling. Because of the surrender of the Far East, their expeditionary force only had more than 400,000 people left. As a result, the 100,000 people deployed on the first line of defense in Moscow were defeated by the Romanian army this time, and only a few of them withdrew to Moscow. Only more than 300,000 people were left in the entire expeditionary force.

He cursed in his heart that the damn Romania had gone from an ally during World War I to an enemy today. What made him even more unacceptable was that Romania, which was thought to be a second-rate country, had such a strong combat effectiveness.

The reason why Romania joined the Allies during World War I was actually very simple.

Romania and Russia had always had territorial disputes, so they did not want to join the Allies to fight. Moreover, the king of Romania at that time was German, and naturally had a natural affinity with Germany. But Carol I did not persist until World War I. His successor was Ferdinand I. Although he was also of German descent, he was more pragmatic and did not blindly choose sides.

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire was defeated by Russia, Romania saw that the opportunity had come, so it joined the Allied Powers and could not wait to declare war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Romania successfully joined the Allied Powers by catching up with this ride, gained huge benefits after the war, and successfully won the support of Britain and France.

Whether it was the original time and space or the World War II in this time and space, the pro-German faction in Romania was rampant, and Germany's invincible combat power made Romania follow Germany wholeheartedly. As for the allies in the last war? Wherever you want to stay!

And this time Germany did not treat Romania badly. The mustache in the original time and space was not good to this little brother. At least compared with Hungary and Bulgaria, Romania was simply raised by a stepmother. They were all small followers, but Germany forced Romania to cede a lot of territory to these two countries, such as northern Transylvania ceded to Hungary and southern Dobruja was returned to Bulgaria. Romania wanted to cry but had no tears, but had to bite the bullet and follow Germany.

Not only did Yannick not let them cede land, he also took out 300 tons of the more than 800 tons of gold seized from Poland as a "reward" to Romania, helping Romania to reorganize its military industry and let all Romanian soldiers replace them with German weapons.

In front of the Romanian army equipped with German weapons and with several times more people than them, the resistance of the US military seemed so insignificant, and the defense line was easily defeated.

Facing the German bombardment day and night, the morale of the soldiers hiding in the underground fortifications in Moscow was also greatly hit. If morale had a numerical value, it would probably drop to a negative number. He had received news of several soldiers committing suicide.

The staff officer continued to report to Zhukov. "Comrade Commander, many passages leading to the ground have been blown up or blocked."

Zhukov just nodded when he heard this. He had expected this. After all, it was a miracle that those passages could remain intact under such dense and fierce German artillery fire. But there are no more miracles in Moscow today. "Clear these passages as soon as possible. Such high-intensity shelling by the Germans cannot last too long. They may launch an attack in two days."

"yes!"

As soon as the staff officer left, Minuk came in, sat next to Zhukov, and spoke in an inaudible voice. "Molotov defected."

"What?!" Zhukov was shocked. "Who said that?!"

"Comrade Malenkov told me personally that he slipped out of Channel 3 last night."

Zhukov's eyes were full of anger and he gritted his teeth. "These damn traitors will not end well!"

Minuk smiled bitterly and sighed. They couldn't see whether these guys would end well.