I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 96

“It’s a shame to waste those paintings…”

“Yes, maybe we should have sent the forgeries instead of the originals…”

“Hmm, I don’t think that would work. What if they find out?”

Although the paintings were valuable, they were not irreplaceable.

Some of them were stolen from the Hermitage Museum, but most of them were bought with bribes. 

They were not worth their true price, and they could be retrieved later when Berlin was conquered.

It would be unfortunate if they were burned by air raids or shelling, but who had time to worry about that? 

The greedy pigs like Goering would probably stash them away somewhere and bury them. 

They could be found again later.

But it was absurd to save some paintings at the cost of spilling more blood of the young men.

“Hitler seems to have changed indeed.”

“Sigh…”

“Is that so…?”

No matter how hard the Soviet spy network tried, they could not match the collective research of the future scholars who studied Hitler’s personality systematically.

It was well-known that Hitler was a vegetarian and a dog lover, but it was harder to know that he loved classical art and hated modernism.

Besides, who would have expected him to fall for such a bait?

We sent him some paintings as a ‘gift’, but we deliberately mixed some works that he would like and some that he would hate.

“Hitler was originally a failed art student and a fan of classical art. He also hated modernism. We sent him both kinds of paintings, but he showed no interest? Hahaha, I bet the Germans are also puzzled by this.”

“As expected, your brilliant strategy is unmatched, Comrade Secretary!”

Hitler’s attitude could change since we became his enemies. 

He might not like the paintings even if we sent them. But what if we sent him some modernist works that he hated from the Soviets that he hated?

The ‘gift’ operation was based on this idea. The envoy sent us a short message with a code that meant <The Führer’s reaction was cold>, which we had prepared in advance. 

Based on this, I could plan the next move.

What kind of person he had become would be reported by Molotov and others when they came back, but for now, I was half-sure.

He seemed to be a person from the future like me…!

“Report the progress of the operation.”

“Yes, Comrade Secretary. The members of the Black Orchestra that we contacted were mostly hiding from the eyes of the intelligence agency. But as soon as we approached them with disguised identities, they accepted our proposal!”

“Indeed… The disaster of the Eastern Front must have had a great impact on them.”

The Black Orchestra was partly exposed already. Only partly.

The SD claimed that they had arrested them with the help of Abwehr, but there were hardly any names that I recognized on the list of arrestees, and most of them were lieutenants or captains. 

It seemed like they were cutting off their tails.

The real key figures were mostly in their places, and they looked enough to carry out the operation.

If Hitler already knew what the Black Orchestra was and that there was an assassination plot against him, then the coup would fail, but I was not counting on that.

I just wanted them to help us destroy the generals of the Wehrmacht and Abwehr.

“But what if more competent people replace those we pushed out?”

The cautious Vasilevsky always maintained his cautious attitude.

After becoming the Chief of Staff and Marshal, there was no one who could openly oppress Vasilevsky, so with my active approval, he took on the role of ‘the devil’s advocate’ within Stavka. 

And it was also a meaningful point.

“Hmm… Do you think there are any more competent people than Model or Manstein? If there are, then there is nothing we can do about it! Hahaha. Generals, did you hear that?”

“We apologize, Comrade Secretary!”

“We are ashamed!”

The faces of the Soviet generals turned red.

They all suffered defeats in Operation Barbarossa and afterwards.

Zukhov, who lost to Model with a 10:1 exchange rate in a favorable situation, seemed especially embarrassed.

“Of course, it is possible that some parts of Abwehr or SD are replaced by more competent people… As long as they don’t get caught up in their own power struggles!”

After Hitler’s failed assassination attempt, Abwehr was torn apart by being blamed for the incident. This time it would not be much different.

SD also had various troublesome people appointed as leaders after Heydrich’s assassination, but they did not seem to have done anything remarkable. 

Rather, they wasted time and resources by fighting over authority and territory.

In fact, the intelligence capabilities of Germany were not that impressive, from not realizing that Enigma was cracked to having all their spies captured.

The Soviet intelligence, which had infiltrated the British intelligence and sucked up their information for 50 years, would probably think that they were playing children’s games. 

They still did not know that we were conducting a bribery operation, did they?

“SD becoming more competent does not affect us much, Marshal Vasilevsky.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. Their main area of responsibility is… the ‘satellite states’, such as France or Britain, where they weed out the rebels and dissidents. It is not directly related to us.”

This was also true. The secret police, including Gestapo, were mainly in charge of hunting down Jews, resistance fighters, and spies, not the Soviet army. That was rather the role of Abwehr within the Wehrmacht.

We might be connected to the resistance fighters, but it was not necessarily good for them to have too much autonomy.

The only role we expected from them was to establish a regime loyal to the Soviet Union after Germany’s collapse.

It would be nice for them to fight independently and drive out Germany, but that was not good for the Soviet Union. 

Especially in places like France, which were far from the Soviet Union.

The Soviet front yard, Yugoslavia, where tens of thousands of ‘army’ led by Tito fought against nearly 100,000 German troops every week, was just like our field army. But if France did that, there would be no way to intervene.

“Especially France. The communists who follow our orders must take over the regime in France.”

“I will carry out your orders, Comrade Secretary. Don’t worry, at least half of the French Resistance are from the communist factions.”

“I see. Beria. I know your abilities well. Controlling France is crucial for our future domination of Europe.”

It was the same in actual history. Even after spending billions of dollars through the Marshall Plan, the United States could not stop the European politicians from advocating for an independent course in Europe.

For example, de Gaulle of France and Adenauer of West Germany. They established the European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS), the precursor of the European Union, to proclaim that Europe could stand on its own without the influence of the United States.

Moreover, de Gaulle pursued an independent policy and succeeded in defying the United States. 

He advocated for a nuclear armament of his own, withdrew from NATO, and tried to unite Europe under France’s leadership and voice against the United States.

“The French are proud and stubborn. They will resist anyone who tries to control Europe. We have to pave the way before they ruin our European strategy!”

The United States, which wanted to control Western Europe, had to intervene deeply in order to turn France, which had been shaken by de Gaulle, to their side.

After World War II, France was the key partner of the United States in its Western European strategy.

Britain was clearly pro-American, but it was not a continental country and its national power was declining. 

Therefore, the United States tried to win over France by actively intervening in the colonial wars that France waged.

And they stepped on a landmine called Vietnam.

The Vietnam War, which was called a quagmire, drained the national power of the United States and made them spend the 1960s there. 

The progressive regime that had continued since Roosevelt was completely overturned.

Eisenhower in the middle was a Republican, but he was a very progressive figure. 

Excluding him, the Democratic regime that had continued since the 1930s was overturned by Nixon’s era.

“Remember, remember this. No matter how Gestapo-like we are, we can’t kill all the people. The more they crack down, the more the flames of resistance will spread. And at the forefront of that will always be our party, the Communist Party!”

Even though he was right, it felt uncomfortable to hear it from Beria. Was it because he was associated with that lunatic Hitler? ‘We can’t kill all the people’…?

After Heydrich’s assassination, SD avenged him by wiping out a Czech village. 

Their strategy of killing several civilians for every German soldier killed could temporarily scare them, but it eventually backfired.

And too many people died in the process.

Well, that doesn’t mean we can give up on assassinating the enemy of the people. If we can’t do anything because we’re afraid of who Germany will kill, we’ll just die with them.

“Have you contacted those who infiltrated?”

“Yes, Your Excellency Secretary. They say they are ready to execute the operation as soon as you give them the order.”

“Very good.”

He would give them the order to start the operation as soon as Molotov set foot on Soviet soil.

He had prepared detailed instructions for this.

‘Use something other than a Sten submachine gun that jams easily. Use something that has proven reliability.’

‘Put tetanus toxin in grenades so that even if they survive, they will suffer from septicemia.’

In actual history, the assassins used a Sten submachine gun that jammed and threw grenades, and Heydrich survived for a while before dying from septicemia.

How bad would septicemia be in this era when it was still incurable even in 2010s?

In actual history, Heydrich refused to trust Czech doctors even after being injured. He said he couldn’t entrust his body to an inferior race.

But here, he had to make sure he was killed more thoroughly.

He had to die for Hitler’s back to be tickled properly.