Steel Soviet Union

Chapter 2240 "All shot"

Malashenko finally knew everything, and also figured out why these Germans were playing word games on the so-called agreement and covering up some details that should have been clearly stated on it.

It turned out that the composition of the remnants of the 41st Armored Corps was not simple. It was not an ordinary German army, like the millions of German prisoners of war detained in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps.

Of course, this does not mean that these Germans in the remnants of the 41st Armored Corps are all Aryan supermen with three heads and six arms and inhuman appearance. The special point of this remnant German army does not lie in this, but in their subordinate units and Going back in time to trace the origins.

It was also after seeing off Major General Gram and his entourage who said he would "discuss it after we go back and report the final results later" that Malashenko, who felt deeply that something was amiss, interrogated several people in person. I just caught the junior German officers with a higher military rank and used some conventional methods to scare them so that they would tell the truth.

It turned out that a small branch of a "quite famous" Wehrmacht unit was now entangled in the remnants of the 41st Armored Corps, with its organizational structure and remnant soldiers still there.

As for the name of this rather famous National Defense Force unit, let alone Malashenko, even the staff officer who was responsible for coordinating the interrogation and taking notes was shocked when he heard it, and then he gritted his teeth and said fiercely. His teeth were itching and he wanted to eat those fascists alive.

This German army was only famous for one thing: the arrest and execution of Zoya, a female Soviet guerrilla in 1941. His torture methods before executing Zoya were so outrageous that after the news reached Moscow, even Comrade Stalin, the loving father who sat in the Kremlin's core power office, was furious and issued a "disrespectful response to the German troops." Accept the order to surrender and be shot.”

What really surprised Malashenko was not the special nature of this group of German soldiers, but that this group of people could actually be encountered by him here and fall into his hands on this battlefield in East Prussia.

According to the confession of a German major who was personally interrogated by Malashenko after being captured, the 332nd Regiment of the 197th Infantry Division of the German Wehrmacht, which arrested and tortured Zoya and then executed Zoya, later evolved several times due to the continuous development and changes of the war, and split into Multiple troops.

Let’s take the recent battle situation as an example.

At the end of Operation Bagration in the fall of 1944, the superior unit of the 332nd Regiment that executed Zoya, the German 197th Infantry Division, followed Army Group Center to face the Red Army's powerful frontal offensive and resisted desperately, but was eventually defeated by the Red Army. The torrent of steel was washed away in pieces, causing heavy losses.

In an unknown battle, which the German major probably didn't know about, the 197th Infantry Division was surrounded and attacked by superior Red Army forces, and was almost wiped out. Even the division commander was hit by heavy artillery fire from the Red Army while leading his troops to retreat. Blast to death.

After that, the 197th Infantry Division, which had been crippled and lost its combat effectiveness, absorbed some remnants of other units and retreated to the rear to reorganize.

After reviewing the situation, the German superiors concluded that there was no need to replenish the 197th Infantry Division. The 197th Infantry Division was almost completely exhausted, leaving only an empty frame and a bunch of scrapped infantry divisions. The cost of raising a new infantry division is the same.

The 197th Infantry Division is not a meritorious German unit with outstanding military exploits, and its ordinary numerical designation does not need to be preserved for reconstruction.

In view of this, the Central Army Group Headquarters directly took off the designation of the 197th Infantry Division after the war, dispersed and reorganized its remaining troops, and used them as supplementary forces to fill in the emergency after the super-disastrous defeat of Operation Bagration. Among the various German field troops waiting to fill the vacancies.

Coincidentally, the 41st Armored Corps, which retreated and was entrenched in Poland at that time, received some of the troops from the 197th Infantry Division after it was disbanded and reorganized.

What's even more damning coincidence is that the batch of supplementary troops received by the 41st Armored Corps was the 332nd Regiment, which was the most complete among the remaining units of the 197th Infantry Division and had a relatively small loss of troops. In other words, it is precisely because the 41st Armored Corps is the main first-level field force group of the National Defense Forces that its troop replenishment has a high priority and needs to be given the highest level of priority guarantee possible, so it can obtain such a unit with a relatively complete organization and rich combat experience. Corps to supplement.

After taking over the 332nd Regiment, the subsequent battles experienced by the 41st Armored Corps were still not smooth.

In the Polish Campaign, due to the penetration of the central front, the annihilation of the Grossdeutschland Division, and the loss of the city of Warsaw at the speed of light, the German north and south fronts were separated, unable to care for each other, and ultimately failed. This is a well-known thing now.

At that time, the 41st Armored Corps was in northern Poland. After receiving the news that the battlefield was out of control, it was also the first group to take action to evacuate northward to avoid being trapped by the encircled Soviet mobile group and being attacked from both sides. The final result of its retreat was The destination is East Prussia in northern Poland.

After withdrawing into East Prussia, the 41st Armored Corps took a short rest and was soon sent to the forefront of the East Prussian theater bordering Poland as a first-class main field group to arrange formations and erect defenses in preparation to withstand the attack. The Soviet strategic onslaught could be foreseen next.

The matter is basically sorted out here, and then there is the story of Malashenko commanding the leader's division to attack and violently bombard the enemy.

According to the subsequent account of the captured German major, who was very honest and obviously timid after being intimidated, the 332nd Infantry Regiment underwent a second split after being merged into the 41st Armored Corps. One of the battalions was integrated into the previous armored division that had been killed by Malashenko, and acted together as an elite armored grenadier unit assigned to the armored forces for cooperation.

The remaining two battalions absorbed a new recruit supplementary battalion. After the veterans led the new recruits and diluted it, an elite infantry regiment with rich combat experience was formed and assigned to another, which is currently the third battalion. The only remaining armored division under the 41st Armored Corps is used as the main force.

In other words, Malashenko had previously killed one-third of the group of Nazi executioners who had murdered Zoya and were ordered to kill by his loving father without knowing it.

The remaining two-thirds did not run away or die. Excluding the German corpses lying scattered on the battlefield, the rest are still living in the remnants of the 41st Armored Corps.