Churchill smiled thinly. He sat comfortably in his chair and faced the Waterloo battle’s painting. His mind wandered toward happy thoughts about possible victory for a fleeting moment. It seemed that for the first time, things were not going so bad for a start. He remembered that the first few moments of fighting against the Axis (either be Japanese or Germans) had been a little more difficult.

  “Okay, let's move on to the next subject. Brooke, Dowding, we need to discuss where to send our troops….” Winston felt light-headed as he felt things were under control. After all, the dreaded Russian nightmare was not as bad as it seemed.

  The only problem was that the Allies had not seen what Zhukov was made of yet...

  Somewhere on the Chinese mainland

  City of Jinan on the Huang Hei River, July 17th, 1947

  The Nakajima Kikka squadron, more informally known as the Genda squadron, was on the approach toward the city of Jinan. Takashi Onishi, a pilot in the Imperial Japanese Army, was flying on a peculiar mission.

  The squadron’s job was to escort a group of B-29 American bombers. Not so long ago, the Japanese flyer intended to destroy them (or at least try because the big bastards we tough to kill), but now he was protecting them.

  The irony of the moment wasn’t lost on the ace. The former enemy was now the ally. And he had to admit, they weren’t as bad as an occupier in Japan either. The food situation had even improved after they took over, and apart from a little nostalgia, there wasn’t much to be said about the disappearance of the Imperial government.

  The Japanese jet was flying close to one of the B-29s. So close that the aircraft pilot waved at him. Another peculiar moment, as a few months ago, they would have shot at each other. The B-29 was a magnificent flying machine, and it wasn’t called the super flying fortress for anything.

  Its length was 30 meters, while its wingspan was a stunning 43 meters. Apart from a few giant German planes (the Gigant class of transport aircraft), there wasn’t anything bigger in the skies in 1947. With a whopping 9000-kilometer range, it also sported an impressive defensive armor, making it resistant to 30mm shells, flak fire, and the likes. It possessed eight .50-caliber machine guns in remote-controlled turrets, two .50-caliber machine guns, one 20mm cannon in the tail and 20,000 pounds of bombs.

  Takashi remembered the epic battles with the damned planes. They could take a lot of punishment, and it wasn’t rare to see them riddled with shells and still flying. They were difficult to approach, and a fighter had to be careful not to get hit by the multitude of bullets it could fire in its defense.

  The B-29 he was flying beside had quite a sleek, all-metal look, made of shiny aluminum. The mission they’d been assigned was to raid the city of Jinan. The area was where the Soviet forces that had assaulted Tsingtao retreated and where the American high command wanted to launch a counter-offensive.

  Japanese General Yamada’s army would do the attacking on the ground, but the deal was that the Americans would do the support from the air. While a lot of Yankees flew with them, Japan had also been asked to contribute with its pristine all-aces jet squadron. In the dark of night, they took off at one of the hastily built airfields east of Tsingtao and rendezvous with the large bomber strike that flew off from Japan.

  They then proceeded into the Chinese mainland and flew over the advancing Imperial troops, that cheered as they passed high overhead. The Soviets were nowhere to be seen as they retreated further into the Chinese hinterland. The Red Army had suffered a serious setback in Tsingtao, and General Kerenin was trying to regroup his forces in the city of Jinan.

  The large raid’s goal (there were a little over 300 B-29 in the airstrike) was to disrupt Russian preparations and reorganization in order to pave the way for the Japanese counter-attack.

  Dawn eventually broke, and they approached the city, which they spotted from dozen of miles away since another squadron of Allied bombers had preceded them. Hence, the bright lights of the ground explosions produced by their bombs lit Jinan like a beacon.

  All the while, no Soviet fighter challenged them, and the Americano-Japanese force approached Jinan un-hindered. Onishi could see the thousands of men and vehicles streaming into the city and around it as they came. The Russians were getting ready to receive the Imperial soldiers.

  Then they were flying over the city, and the flashy bomber beside Takashi opened its bomb bay. Many dark bombs streamed downward in a cluster reminiscent of a flock of birds wildly flying in all directions.

  All around him and everywhere he looked, the scene repeated itself. And then the bombs started exploding on the ground. For the first time, Onishi was a spectator of American carpet bombing. And for once, he didn’t care bout the explosion's results. The numerous and powerful ordnance exploded in a narrow sector and created havoc in the Chinese city, killing countless civilians and Russian soldiers alike. The fury of the blasts ignited giant fires that would not be easy to put down.

  As he turned his plane back to base (the B-29 had unloaded their cargoes, so it was time to head back), he decided that it was about time that Japan was on the good side of U.S. firepower. The Red Army was in for a treat, and he was happy not to be on the receiving end for a change.

  CHAPTER 6

  The battle of Berlin

  July 14th to 19th, 1947

  The fight between the Allied forces in Berlin and the three Russian fronts announced to be an epic one. General Devers and his men were well entrenched in and around the city itself.

  The American General could count on nearly a million men, stretched from just west of Magdeburg (west of Berlin) to Leipzig in the south and Prenzlau in the north. British, American, Canadian, South African, and some South American forces (Brazil) were well represented in his army. Western Allied troops included twenty-eight corps, ten of them armored and mostly operating outside Berlin.

  Facing them was the Allied equivalent of three Army groups: 1st and 2nd Bielorussian Front and 1st Ukrainian Fronts. More troops poured into Germany on the Baltic Coast, in the south, and into Slovakia/Austria, but these three commands were tasked to take the Reich’s former capital city. Marshal Zhukov ensured that they would have some measure of success by concentrating over 60 000 artillery pieces (the same ones that opened the offensive a week before) for the grind into Berlin. In all, the Red Army committed two million men to the direct assault on the city. The forces numbered a staggering fifty-two corps, most of them infantry (forty-five) and seven armored (with the big, lumbering KV-2 that the Soviets still had) and tons of IS-2 tanks.

  The battle opened with a fierce fire exchange in Berlin’s eastern suburbs, with a couple of British corps resisting for an entire day before being chased off by the heavy Russian artillery. The fight soon degenerated into a house-to-house struggle, and General Devers decided he was doing well since the Red Army was having the most difficult time advancing. No wonder. The Allies were a well-equipped, experienced, battle-tested force.

  The Anglo-Americans used explosives to blow many houses apart to create piles of rubble into which they dug deep fighting positions. They were also greatly helped in their endeavor by Russian artillery attacks. Mines were scattered throughout the probably Russian advance. By July the 16th (two days into the battle), the whole eastern area of the city was mere rubble and almost impassable to tanks, which greatly impeded the Red Army’s attacks

  Finding it suicidal to venture along the streets, the poor Soviet troops resorted to a tactic used on the eastern front: It was called “mouse holing.” Born out of the many dreadful city battles in the Soviet Union during the seven-year war, it was a good way to advance and win without getting killed. Explosives packed against the connecting wall of two buildings blasted an opening through which the soldiers’ chucked grenades and then followed through with a charge to clear any Allied soldier on the other side. The only way around that was to destroy the building, but then the Anglo-Saxons did need some left for cover against their enemies.

  In Berlin, buildings were typically adjoining, so the Russians advanced from one to another while seldom venturing onto a street. It was a deadly game. At times, the Allies responded by setting demolitions triggered when the Soviets burst through their mousehole. Sometimes an entire structure would collapse, burying the soldiers within.

  When things got too difficult, the divisional commanders would call in artillery support in any given position, and the powerful guns would oblige and obliterate any hardpoint. Luckily for the Allies, the enemy artillery was very difficult to move into the destroyed, rubble-strewn city.

  Heavy casualties soon forced the Red Army commanders to shift from all-out assaults on the Allied positions to small but intense bite-and-hold operations. The infantry took out one strong point at a time and then held on grimly against Americano-British counterattacks. In fighting reminiscent of combat between the Germans and the Russians on the Eastern Front, both sides used flamethrowers, satchel charges, and concentrated small-arms fire to move slowly from point to point. Unfortunately, rain and fog limited airstrikes and Russian artillery began running out of ammunition as they expended too much of it in the first days of the offensive. Soon days turned into a week as Stalin's forces crept closer to the beleaguered city center.

  By the 19th of July, Devers cabled to Eisenhower that he had things well in hand and would resist for a long time, especially if he poured more reinforcements into Berlin to cover his losses. More troops were moved into the city to raise the ante a couple of notches against the Yvan’s.

  Indeed, they could hold their own against the attacking Soviets. But the problem was elsewhere.

  Battle in the mountain

  Kranjska Gora, July 19th, 1947

  A long burst of bullets raked the brick wall protecting Summers from the Russians assaulting their position. They ducked even further down on the ground, putting their hands on their helmets to hold them in place. Several Russian PPSh-41 submachine guns peppered their hiding place from different angles.

  “Boss, we gotta move, or we’ll get swamped,” said Turnbull, as he was applying a cloth to try and stop the bleeding from a wound one of the men had received a few minutes before. Looking at the soldier, Jack decided that he would not survive.

  The battle against the dastardly Ruskies had been raging for a little under ten days. The Lone Star Division had suffered heavy losses in that span of time and been pushed out of Kranjska Gora entirely. Jack and his men were now somewhere between Italy and Yugoslavia, or the old border definition of it anyway. They didn’t know exactly, and it didn’t matter. All they knew was that some form of defenses was being organized in Trieste and its vicinity on the Adriatic Sea. The Lone Star had been ordered to cover the retreat and fight its way to the Italian coastal city.

  They had been doing so for a while now, and losses were terrible, with the Russians on their heel every step of the way. They were now on some non-descript farm in the hills and had insufficient time to prepare good defensive positions. The Yvan’s (they’d adopted the German nickname fully now that they were fighting the Russians) were relentlessly following them. In the first few days of the Soviet attack, Summers had wondered what his friend Visnevsky thought of the whole matter, but now he didn’t care. Yes, he’d been friends with the man, but now he had seen too many of his brothers die in the Red Army’s attacks to think of the big Russian sergeant as someone he could still fraternize with.

  They heard Russian yelling. A sure sign that the assault was coming. “Can you move,” Jack asked the wounded soldier Turnbull was attending to. “No, sir, I can’t. You guys go. I’ll cover you.” With no time to argue (the Ruskies were probably only seconds from swamping their little stone house), he gave the man a couple of grenades and some ammo. “Good man.” Turnbull picked up his gun and signaled to the other two men with them.

  They were on a small farm in the hills, and they’d taken refuge in the farmer’s humble dwelling. Other men in the Regiment were spread around on the small stone walls and other features, while the Soviets were several meters down, attacking. Summers estimated they were severely outnumbered; at least a full Russian division pursued them. He wondered what the Regiment commander would do now. The man wasn’t a bad tactician and knew how to fight a battle. He hoped that he would get them out of their predicament. Jack’s job in return was to make sure the men in his squad survived and killed as many Yvan’s as possible.

  “Okay, let's run for it,” he said, starting to run from the house’s backdoor, facing a small patch of trees where they would try to hide again. As he exited the stone house, he could hear the enemy’s footsteps and the wounded man’s frantic firing. The Soviets also fired, and bullets flew everywhere.

  As they ran through the empty field space between the house and the tree-covered area, enemy bullets whistled by them. A muffled explosion reverberated, and Jack decided that the soldier was using his grenades. The small forest was lined up with more men from the Regiment, and they poured fire into their pursuer. Some of the men waved them onward, urging them to hurry.

  They continued running, and two men fell right beside Summers, hit in the backs by Russian bullets. And then finally entered the woods. The whistling sounds of shots were followed by the cracks of the ordinance hitting the trees. Jack was panting hard but still found some air to get his bearings. “Who’s in charge here,” he said between two long breaths as he looked for orders. “Here!” said an officer that was busy reloading his rifle. Summers walked by him. It was captain Simms, one of the good leaders of the unit. A fighting man like Jack liked them. “Sir. Where do you need us?” “Just get in the line, sergeant, and pour fire into the bastards. We need to stop them from advancing, or the whole position will be upturned.”

  He signaled his surviving men to get in position, and they did so as fast as possible. By the time Summer got back into firing position at the wood’s edge, he saw that the house they’d occupied a few moments before was now a pile of rubble. There was no sign of the wounded soldier, as he must have been caught in the blast or buried when the small construction fell on itself.

  The fall of Magdeburg

  One million Allied troops get encircled, July 20th, 1947

  A front (Russian: фронт, front) was a type of military formation that originated in the Russian Empire and was used by the Polish Army (before its fall in 1939), the Red Army, the Soviet Army, and Turkey. It was roughly equivalent to an army group in the military of most other countries. It varied in size but, in general, contained three to five armies, in turn including two to four corps.

  Army groups differed from fronts in that Soviet fronts typically had their own army-sized tactical fixed-wing air organization. According to Soviet military doctrine, the air army was directly subordinated to the front commander (typically a ground commander).

  A Front was mobilized for a specific operation, after which it could be reformed and tasked with another operation (including a change in name and designation). It could also be disbanded with its formations dispersed among the other active Fronts and its HQ reintegrated into its original Military District HQ.

  While an epic battle raged into Berlin itself, Zhukov prepared a great encirclement operation. His troops set out on their attack roughly the same day as the day the battle for the Reich’s former capital ignited in all its fury.

  The Soviet marshal thus tasked a grand total of five fronts to penetrate deep into Germany, drive west, and encircle the Allied troops fighting in Berlin and the immediate area. The final objective was the city of Magdeburg, 150 kilometers west of Berlin.

  From the north (northern pincer) would attack the Volkhov and Bryansk front. From their recently conquered city of Rostock on the shores of the Baltic, they would drive toward Lubeck and storm the city. Once done with that first task, they would send some troops west in a feint but not strike too hard, while the bulk of the soldiers would head southward toward Magdeburg.

  From Dresden and its immediate area (southern pincer) would attack Voronezh, Southwestern, and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts. Their job was to attack toward Leipzig (but not too hard) while mustering the bulk of its forces for the 225 kilometers journey to Magdeburg.

  The outflanking operation opened up with two powerful airstrikes, first on Lubeck and then on the frontlines just west of Dresden, where the Allies resisted fiercely. The two attacks went well for the Soviets, as the bulk of Western Allied forces was concentrated in Berlin to support General Devers and its life-and-death struggle.

  By the 17th, Soviet forces had taken Lubeck and were only twenty kilometers from Leipzig. Allied commanders (including Eisenhower) incorrectly assessed that the Soviet main objective was the city itself. Hence, they moved their reinforcements there instead of into the center, where Magdeburg was under threat.

  Then on the 18th, both of Zhukov’s pincers were only 40 kilometers from Magdeburg. Eisenhower ordered Devers to retreat from Berlin immediately and breakout west in order to avoid being encircled.

  The 3rd American Army was dispatched to try and beef up the Magdeburg defenses, but it was already too late. The Russians had learned well from their German enemies. Time and again, they’d been encircled in large-scale Blitzkrieg maneuvers. The Allies never really faced the same predicament, as they’d mostly been on the offensive ever since they came back to Europe. Most of their campaigning had either been in Africa, Italy, and Spain, where they had a narrow front to manage. By the time they broke out into France, the Wehrmacht was no longer able to mount any operation of the type they’d been able to a few years earlier. And besides, by 1946-1947, 70% of the Wehrmacht was committed on the Eastern Front anyway.