The Early Spring Offensive of 1943

In Stalin's contented mind, the days of upset tummy were over. The great victory at Stalingrad was relentlessly shouted to the workers in the rear area factories. There were few survivors of those other battles with the ferocious Nazi's from the battles of Kharkov in March. The victors of the siege of Leningrad had subsequently perished of famine and an epidemic of some unknown disease which seemed to be a cross between syphilus and acne. All was good in Stalin's realm. All information flowed into the underground administration bunkers in Moscow, and all that information was good.

According to Stalin's spy chief, Beria, Hitler only had two hundred tanks. Fifty survivors in the cratered front lines, and 150 forming up in the rear. Stalin had 900 tanks of his own. Even without Kharkov and its strategic manganese, Stalin could gloat with certainty at the ultimate victory of Bolshevism over European civilization. He would dictate terms to the capitalists at Versailles.

Hitler was well aware of Stalin's plans, infact his daily routine and breakfast habits were the subject of gossip at the Fuhrer Headquarters, located during the time of this battle in an armored train hidden in a tunnel. Hitler had finally relented to the begging of his Danish Nazi partners in Fascism, to unleash the huge contingent of Danish SS troops. This fearsome formation was called the Viking Division.

The Viking Division was, on paper, a standard three regiment, six battalion infantry formation. For political reasons, the Viking was overstrength by three battalions. Hitler had added redoubt to outwork by attaching two tank battalions and an assault gun battalion. Although called a division, the Viking was corps-level in strength.

Stalin's first inkling that Hitler was attacking, again, was when the phone lines to Zygmal went dead. That was the morning of April 11, 1943. By afternoon, a reconaissance plane, sent from Stalin's personal air force reconaissance regiment, reported that the city of Zygmal appeared to be on fire, with German motorized columns moving across three freshly laid bridges across the river Pelst. Moscow was in danger!

The smell of the smoke, the burning straw roofs and rubber tires, reached Moscow after three days. Stalin ordered the three hundred tanks of the Fifty-Second Army directly into the path of the advancing Fascists. The Fascists would be outnumbered two to one in tanks, Stalin thought. Maybe he went to bed early, or left the conference before Beria could tell him about all the German heavy flak artillery and multiple rocket launchers. The Fifty-Second Army lasted five days, three of them attacking the Danish Fascists of the Viking Division. The last two days were spent being chased in the scruby forests by German ski troops using hunting dogs. The commander of the Fifty-Second saved his wife and children from the firing squad by shooting himself with his drivers pistol.

Casualties were heavy. A quarter of the Viking Division was in hospital with a diverse array of bullet wounds and artillery fragmentation injury. One in ten were dead. Most of the tanks, trucks, and tracked vehicles were broken down along the path of the battlefield. Hitler called an end for the offensive, and turned his attention to a tempting salient that had been created, centered around a city called Kursk.

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this.