I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 55

Stalin was bluffing. Or maybe he was just being bold for now. 

King Mihai informed the commanders of each unit on the front and rear lines about the proposals that the Soviet Union had offered.

<We already have four divisions of powerful elite troops. We have to join them now to secure our general’s position. We have been promised a huge gift from the Soviet Union – Bessarabia, Transylvania, Dobruja, and other regions of Greater Romania. The people support our achievements!

Join the legitimate Romanian government! The traitor Antonescu has been captured and is in custody, and he repents of his sins and promises not to hold a grudge against us for joining the rebels.>

The commanders were shaken. 

The German army tried to block the king’s letter, but the contents of the letter were secretly spread to the corps, division, and regiment levels.

The senior commanders were worried that their subordinates would use their troops to commit the same treason or deceive them, and the junior commanders were anxious about what choice their superiors would make.

Distrust was rampant among them, and the Soviet army encouraged it. 

Zhukov, the commander of the Southern Front Army facing the Romanian army, explained to his subordinates how to lure them.

During the meeting, Budenny, who had been dozing off for a while, woke up with a jerk and asked.

“Uh, so what do I have to do?”

Budenny Marshal twirled his mustache as if he had not been asleep.

Zhukov was young and hot-tempered, but he had a cunning mind. 

Budenny was envious of this young friend who was designated as the next leader of the Soviet army. 

Well, he was not in a position to covet power or rank at this point.

“Yes, simply put, it’s a kind of deception. First, you capture some prisoners and then…”

The Soviet army used a very classic method to induce division among the enemy in this situation.

The Soviet army raided the Romanian army positions at night and captured about 2,000 prisoners, but some of them were released unconditionally.

The 1st Guards Cavalry Army under Budenny Marshal generously returned 800 prisoners to the Romanian army, along with warm meals, clothes, and a handful of American chocolates.

“Goodbye, friends!”

“Hahaha! See you again!”

“…? Why are they doing this to us?”

And of course, they were all soldiers from a specific division. 

The loyalist Romanian army and the German army suspected and interrogated the division commander, but he denied it with tears, saying that it was their deception.

“Really, really, if you doubt my loyalty, arrest me and search my barracks and headquarters. It’s absurd to collude with them. You won’t find any evidence…”

The middle-aged division commander cried out in injustice and shed tears. 

The German army could not intervene as an ally, so they left the matter to the Romanian army. 

The Romanian army detained the division commander.

<The division commander has been detained on suspicion of treason. Anyone who knows anything about this should report it to the military police.>

The soldiers murmured at the wall poster that the military police had posted. 

The soldiers who did not know if they would survive tomorrow wanted to spend today somehow fun and the rumors spread like wildfire.

But there were some lies mixed in with the rumors that spread.

“Did you hear that the Germans took our division commander away?”

“What? The Germans? I thought they looked a bit different lately…”

“Yeah! They said it’s because they don’t trust us and they took away our supplies!”

The biggest one was that it was not the Romanian army but the German army that imprisoned the division commander.

The Romanian soldiers were worried that the Germans would trample them as well as the Soviet army with their superior firepower.

The reduced supplies due to the rear units in Bucharest siding with the revolutionary command were all blamed on the Germans, and the soldiers began to resent them.

“Don’t starve us! Don’t sell us out to the Soviet army!”

“We are not your servants!”

It was an absurd situation for the Germans. 

The Romanians stabbed them in the back, but was that true?

Especially since the German soldiers did not accurately grasp what was going on, they distrusted the Romanian soldiers even more.

The blind followers of Nazism who despised the Romanians as Latin ‘inferior races’ instigated this situation. 

The SS, Einsatzgruppen, and other ‘special units’ who were classified as such and had a sense of superiority openly picked fights with them.

“Those weak Latins are looking at us like that because they want to stab us in the back someday?”

“Woof! Woof! Get lost you beggars!”

From their point of view, Romanians were weak, poorly armed, and practically colonies or colonies. 

They were no different from the Slavic Untermenschen, except that they were a little better. 

If the Nazi high-ranking officials heard this, they would have said, “How dare you say that to our allies?” But they could not control the soldiers one by one.

The sergeants and junior officers also lacked the awareness that they had to control this situation. 

From their point of view, the Romanian army was physically weak, lacked fighting spirit, and was clumsy.

The senior officers did not know what was happening below and had no time to spare for the operation plan for Model’s retreat.

The Soviet army launched sporadic offensives across the front. 

And at the end of these offensives, there was always a return of a few Romanian prisoners. 

No German prisoners ever came back, and only Romanian prisoners from specific units returned.

“Constantin Basarab and 83 others report their return!”

And the headquarters began to detain and interrogate the returned prisoners.

The interrogation was simple. Did the Soviet army offer you to defect? Or did your superiors show any signs of betrayal?

They were allied soldiers and had eyes to see, so they were not ordered to torture or abuse them.

But there were always people who crossed the line.

“Tell me! Tell me, you damn Latin bastard!”

“Uh… no… please…”

“Don’t open your mouth until I tell you what I want to hear. Got it?”

“Ugh… huff, huff…”

As more and more returning prisoners arrived, the military police in charge of interrogating them asked the counterintelligence unit of the SS unit under their command to join them in interrogating the returning prisoners.

The counterintelligence unit, officially called <Security Police and Security Service Special Operations Group>, or Einsatzgruppen for short, eagerly joined the interrogation.

And they bragged about how they ‘interrogated’ the Romanians. ‘Water knows the truth’, the Einsatzgruppen torturers joked openly.

“Damn German bastards! Why are you doing this to us! Who’s responsible!”

“Why! Weren’t we allies? We are comrades fighting against the Soviets!”

The dissatisfaction of the Romanian soldiers boiled up in an instant. 

The ‘interrogated’ soldier was soon released and admitted to the military hospital where he received treatment from the best German doctors, but at some point a rumor circulated in the barracks that the soldier had died.

The division commander, regiment commander, and Romanian staff officers under him were being investigated for collusion and sabotage, as their troops had been massively transferred to the allies.

As the soldiers’ discontent grew rapidly, the investigation became more harsh. 

Was there a real traitor among you? Is that why your soldiers are showing such dissatisfaction?

The German military police investigators asked their superiors to allow them to conduct a more thorough ‘interrogation’ of the Romanian officers. 

This request was accidentally leaked to the Romanian army by a colonel who visited the German headquarters and heard about it.

“This is an outrageous outrage! Commander!”

“I agree with Colonel Dumitrescu’s opinion. I apologize for this incident. I will take strict measures to prevent this from happening again.”

Colonel Dumitrescu, the commander of the Romanian 3rd Army, raged at Model’s headquarters in Rovno.

‘How dare they think of meddling with a person who has been a general in another country’s army?’

Model was annoyed by his subordinates’ rampage. 

The allied army tortured the returning prisoners as if they were inferior races… 

He had no time for this, as he was preparing for the retreat operation. 

He actually did something wrong, so he took a very humble attitude.

“Colonel, calm down. It was an isolated incident caused by some extremists in our army. Please do not lose your trust in us.”

“Yes, I understand, Marshal Model. Ahem…”

He sighed as he saw the Romanian generals sit down uncomfortably. 

Damn Nazis. What did they throw into the army?

Operation Buffalo, that is, evacuating hundreds of thousands of people, including the 1st Panzer Group and 6th Army, which protruded into Kiev, and local collaborators, was to begin in two days.

But the current situation seemed to imply an uneasy start. 

He tried to erase his bad premonition and went over the operation plan that had already been briefed one by one in front of the commanders of the entire army.

It had to succeed. Even if only to survive the winter. 

This winter… it seemed long and cold.

“About how many units have agreed to follow our command?”

“One third of them have completely agreed to cooperate with us. The remaining two thirds seem to be watching the situation, but the mood of the lower soldiers is on the verge of boiling over. We cannot rule out the possibility that they will surrender or cooperate with us in small units.”

The young king looked at the NKVD liaison officer with his cap pressed down and closed his eyes slightly.

He hated seeing his people die uselessly in war, so he decided to make peace with the Soviet Union and change sides. 

The traitor, dictator Antonescu, had pushed many young men into battle for his own power…

He did not know that he would have to do something similar himself.

Fewer generals than expected were afraid of being punished and chose to side with Germany, and the units that cooperated were less than expected.

The Soviet army vowed to win. 

They would crush those invaders who set foot on Mother Earth.

The king of a weak country could only pray fervently.

‘O God… protect your people.’

King Mihai envied Stalin. 

He was competent, had powerful authority in the Soviet Union, and used it efficiently for his people. 

All institutions of the state moved smoothly according to his orders and worked for the people.

He needed power. 

He looked at the NKVD liaison officer like he was longing for something.