And so, there was no better eye-opener for the two prominent Allied leaders than Molotov's visit to Quebec City in July 1946. Stalin was bent on military conquest as well; of that, Churchill and Truman were now certain.

  The talks between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the conference had been about defeating the Nazi state and the mighty Wehrmacht and the after-war overall situation. For to any sane person in the world, the writing was on the wall. The Third Reich lived on borrowed time, and it was only a matter of months, perhaps a year before it collapsed under the weight of the rest of the planet fighting against it.

  Things had gone smoothly enough on the military discussions, how they should cooperate, how much lend-lease help the Americano-British would send to the Russians, and the likes.

  But the moment the Polish situation was discussed, Molotov stiffened his stance on what would happen once the Soviets "liberated" the Poles. In fact, he'd been pretty clear on the matter: The USSR would consider everything it liberated with its army to be within its zone of influence.

  All of the Western Allies' arguments had been brushed away smoothly by the sleazy diplomat with the good old "might makes right" attitude.

  So the two Allied leaders had decided to continue their talks a bit longer and see how they could plan the after-war period better. For the alternative, i.e., doing nothing, was tantamount to leaving the USSR in control of most if not all of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and even more alarming, perhaps even Turkey and the Middle East.

  Churchill believed that the Stalin hordes wouldn't stop at destroying the Third Reich but would continue against them and occupy the rest of continental Europe. Truman wasn't as adamant about that, but he wasn't far behind. The man was not much of a communist lover.

  So after Molotov left Quebec City, Churchill and his American President friend planned for taking as much territory as they could grab before the Soviets could. An important landing was thus planned in the Balkans (Greece) to avoid having the cradle of democracy falling into Bolshevik hands. More talks about bolstering Auchinleck's forces so he could grab control of all of the Middle East before the Russians pierced the Caucasus defensive line that the Axis had set up since 1944. And then more troops to North Africa to destroy Rommel's army and to eventually send those troops over the Suez to reinforce Auchinleck's forces.

  Turkey was also discussed, but it was decided to leave that for another date since the Allies just didn't have the troops to take the country. Still, the Greek landing would be supplied with a potential landing in the Dardanelles to take control of the Strait before the Russians did.

  Stalin had shown his hand and dropped his cards like in a poker game, and the two western leaders had decided to up the ante and confront the Soviet leaders on his after-war plans.

  For a few days, it almost seemed like they'd forgotten the fact that they still had a powerful enemy to fight, for the Third Reich was a long way from final collapse.

  Operation Citadel part 3

  More battles in the North, July 17-20th, 1946

  In the north, the better part of Guderian's 14 Panzer Division, namely the Fourth Panzer Army, continued its attacks all along the front after the start of Operation Citadel and captured observation points on both fronts necessary for the direction of the artillery preparation the following day. 5th and 8th Panzer Corps battled thunderstorms as well as the Soviets and, on July 17th, had to cross a seemingly bottomless sea of mud along a rain-swollen and heavily defended terrain under troublesome flanking fire and heavy Soviet air attacks. The Wehrmacht also operated under heavy air support, their aircraft having been concentrated right at the tip of the advancing German forces. Guderian, as usual, was well forward, visiting first the 3rd Panzer Division, then the Gross Deutschland SS elite division (one of the last ones), and then the 11th Panzer Division.

  Guderian ordered the Panzers to be held back until something had been done to cross the damned mud created by the torrential rains of the previous day. The force's engineers simply could not organize a proper road that kept the tanks out of the water and mud, and several units' planned tank attack never did come off. In the end, the General ordered a mass attack and decided that losing some units to bad roads and mud was more acceptable than letting the Soviets off too easily. After all, Operation Citadel was supposed to destroy Russian troops, not wait for the ground to dry over and make conditions ideal for the Germans.

  Still, the brave Panzer forces broke through the first belt of Soviet defenses by the 18th, and they finally got all their tanks across by evening. On July 19th, Fourth Panzer Army penetrated the second belt of Russian troops and some of their already fleeing divisions. The Red Army had been surprised and deeply stunned at the reversal of fortune and the Reich's sudden strength and numbers.

  Several Panzer units surged forward, but the 11th Panzer Division was still fighting its way free of the second belt and was under heavy air attacks. The Russians paid dearly in plane losses, facing German jets with their sub-par prop-driven fighters. The 3rd Panzer Division on the left of the offensive failed to advance as hard as planned by Guderian because of swampy terrain (they were close to the Pripet marshes, after all) and heavy enemy fire. Guderian, demonstrating his flexibility, decided to pass it forward and left the resisting Russians to the following infantry units.

  And then, on the 20th, the Russians committed their tank reserves, as something needed to be done to stop the Germans from breaking thru too seriously. Indeed, Fourth Panzer Army's advance provoked furious counterattacks by the First Guard Tank Army, including the 2nd Guard, 5th "Stalingrad" Tank Corps, and the lead elements of the fresh 6th Guard Tank Corps. German air reconnaissance failed to detect the Soviet concentration, which came as a surprise, even if an enemy counter-stroke was to be expected. A mighty Panzer battle ensued between the two Ostfront protagonists and lasted several hours. By sundown on the 20th of July, the Soviets were retreating, leaving over a thousand flaming wrecks behind them. The Panzerwaffe, victorious, also lost a staggering 500 tanks in the fight but were masters of the field.

  On the morning of the 21st of July, orders went all along the Soviet frontline to retreat eastward as fast as possible. Guderian Citadel's offensive had checked the Russian Juggernaut dead in its tracks.

  The Battle of the North

  Siege of Leningrad, July 18th, 1946

  Model listened with great satisfaction to the Reich radio broadcast from the propaganda ministry. Operation Citadel was finally underway and was apparently making a killing.

  The whole thing gave some hope to the General, for his Army's situation was nothing short of desperate. With no means of retreat toward Germany with Soviet forces encircling them south and east, Army Group North was stuck for the duration. Its only escape was either to resist forever (an unlikely possibility) or retreat into Finland and run the risk of making an enemy of their un-cooperative ally.

  Model decided to wait for a little to see what would result from Guderian's offensive before going all-in toward the north and entering Finland with his forces. While his ammunition levels and supplies were low, they had not reached anywhere near-catastrophic, thanks to the leftover Kriegsmarine that dropped cargo every day into the Leningrad harbor and the other one the Wehrmacht controlled in Kronstadt. The Luftwaffe also provided what it could supply him with an uninterrupted air train of planes landing in the two large airports in the city to drop cargo and ammo.

  As he listened to the loud grumbling sounds of dueling artillery in the distance (his HQ was located north of Leningrad and was some distance from the frontline fighting), he felt that he had things under control for the moment. The fifteen divisions stuck in the city were safe from imminent collapse. It was hoped that the Minsk and Ukrainian situation was difficult enough for the Soviet High Command to warrant some troop movement out of the area and into the south, where they would hopefully be needed against Citadel.

  The fighting on the frontline had gotten a little more intense in the last few days, as the Soviets seemingly wanted to speed up things by attacking in futile frontline assaults. While they'd repulsed all of them to date, every one of them consumed ammo his army could ill-afford to use because of its supply replacement rates

  Once the radio address was done, he ordered a couple of his staff officers to bring in the new reports they'd received from Estonia and Latvia. Soviet forces were approaching Talin, the Estonian capital, where some more German troops (two Lithuanian Auxiliary divisions) were entrenched. Another enemy thrust pushed hard toward Riga in Latvia, again defended by a hodgepodge of leftover divisions scrapped together by OKW from Ukrainians and Slovakian units. Things did not look good there, and he wondered if Guderian would be able to make good on his promise and wheel his force north to check the advance once he was done smashing the Alexander Offensive once and for all.

  The situation was problematic, to say the least. The Axis struggled to contain the Soviet advance with its handful of depleted units. If only, thought model, the damned Fuhrer had let him retire south like he'd planned to do, the Reich would have an additional 15 divisions to stem the Red Tide. Instead, its top-of-the-line troops were stuck in Leningrad, in some show of glory or else unwarranted pride from Goering.

  Model hoped hard for Guderian to succeed in operation Citadel, for the Soviets would be in Eastern Prussia and proper German territory in no time after the fall of Riga, which looked more than likely with the meager force it had defending it.

  Army Group North Commander exited the large bunker that was his HQ to look at the horizon, set under a setting sun. It was bright with explosions of enemy artillery shells that were pounding the German lines to rubble. Smoke columns rose in the air in multiple areas of the city, which was now just a mangled piece of concrete and dust. Planes thundered overhead, fighting another of the countless dogfights that the Luftwaffe had to execute to protect the never-ending stream of Gigant ME363 planes and Junker 52s landing to re-supply the Army Group. Readjusting his cap on his head, he sighed, wondering how long his army had and if he would be forced to retire into Finland. Maybe it was destined, in his most nightmarish scenario, to witter on the vine and surrender in place.

  "Anything was possible in this crazy unending war," he thought as he turned back inside his HQ to attack the next pile of paperwork awaiting him.

  Moscow

  Molotov meets Stalin, July 18th, 1946

  Vyacheslav Molotov, the head of Soviet diplomacy in 1946, was a Communist of the first hour and was also a staunch supporter of Stalin. Born in 1890, he met Lenin before the First World War and was intricately involved in the Russian Civil War. After the conflict, he became a very important figure of the Communist Party and went on to occupy the highest offices of the Soviet state.

  In his tenure as Minister of Foreign Affairs for the USSR, he'd participated in the signature of the Germano-Soviet pact in 1939 and ever since the beginning of the war with the Nazi, had been ferrying regularly to the West to discuss with their partners of convenience, the United States, the British Empire, and their minions.

  The Allies had, for now, the same enemy, but Communism had no friend but its own self, and Molotov believed very much in the world revolution prophesized by the likes of Karl Marx.

  The Soviet diplomat was sitting in the austere office of the General Secretary of the USSR, Joseph Stalin himself. The office was dark as it was the evening, and only two small lamps lay on both sides of the wooden desk.

  The man in front of him, called the "man of steel," or else the "little father of the people" or even "dear father" by the people, was in total agreement with Molotov's view. In fact, he was the one that pushed the hardest for it.

  Stalin was also a Bolshevik of the first hour, rendering himself invaluable to Lenin during the years of the Civil war and thereafter. An officially very committed Communist, he was, in reality, the perfect example of the Imperialists he so despised and fought against.

  The leader of the USSR had been the man that had wanted to ally his country with Hitler in the first place. The man that was the reason the Red Army tried to invade Finland during the brief 1940 winter war. He also was responsible for igniting the conflict with the Third Reich when he decided to attack the Wehrmacht in the Middle East.

  A brilliant and calculating man, Stalin looked at Europe and the Middle East with appetite. He was also interested in the eastern Japanese territories but currently didn't have (by the middle of 1946) the troops to put any pressure on the defeated Nippon. His goal was to occupy most of Eurasia and control it with an iron hand.

  And most of all, the Soviet dictator was ready to start another war to make it happen. His man Molotov had been busy delivering that message to the weak Western Powers and their leaders.

  "Foreign Minister," he started. "Yes, great leader," answered Molotov with as much enthusiasm as his drab personality could show. "How good was your trip to Canada?". "Long, arduous and boring, comrade General secretary." "Good," Stalin smiled. "Have you delivered the message to the Americans and the British on our position for what should happen to Europe and the Middle East after the war?" "Yes, and they didn't didn't like it one bit," finished Molotov also with a large smile.

  "Of course they didn't," said Stalin. "That was the whole point. We want them either to push harder and help us for real, or else let us conquer all of Europe!" The Soviet dictator wasn't happy about the Western Allied involvement in the war against the Reich. The USSR was taking the brunt of the casualties against the powerful Wehrmacht, and it didn't look like it was going to be easy to finish liberating Russia altogether.

  And so Molotov's mission had been as much as a warning for the Americano-British to get on their feet and attack the Germans for real as a reminder of who would have the biggest army and the best position after the war.

  The fourth fall of Tobruk

  The Desert Fox storms the fortress, July 18-21st, 1946

  The city of Tobruk was one of the strongest Italian fortresses at the war's start. The Royal Army had designed it to beat any British attempt at invading Libya. When the Italian offensive ended in utter disaster in 1940 and the British Army followed it to the city, it fell after a brief battle since the Duce's soldiers were demoralized and disorganized.

  The British had then moved on to Benghazi and had targeted the rest of Mussolini's African Empire. Then, after their successful campaign in French North Africa, the German forces came to the rescue. Brushing everything before them, the Afrika Korps, under the leadership of the likes of Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel, had stormed the city in a great bloodbath, since this time the Allies had prepared its defenses. So the town again saw the Italian flag hoisted over it, along with the one of Nazi Germany.

  Guderian eventually crossed the Suez Canal and conquered most of the Middle East for the Third Reich, leaving Tobruk well behind. Then, the front became entirely quiet for several years. The Axis possessed the Mediterranean like its private lake; the Allies could not enter it since the Italo Germans controlled both its entry points with the narrow Suez and the Gibraltar Fortress.

  But the Allies eventually retook control of North Africa, reconquered Gibraltar, and started their Mediterranean seaboard liberation campaign. They, of course, pushed toward Egypt thru Cyrenaica and eventually again battled for Tobruk, defended by a German Army this time. They defeated it in a storm of might and steel, and the Tobruk Fortress changed hands again.

  The defeated Wehrmacht retreated with all due speed toward Egypt, and the sad Tobruk war story seemed to have ended there. But then again, a new commander was named in Cairo by the Fuhrer himself, that made sure the nomination went along with some strong reinforcements, Eastern Front needs be damned. For months on end, the dynamic Rommel organized a mighty counter-attack that culminated in the great victory of Alexandria, where the entire Allied Army under American General Bradley was shattered and even eventually surrendered.

  And then the Nazis went on the offensive again, toward Tobruk of all places. And on that day of July 1946, Erwin Rommel looked at it once more with his binoculars from his Hannomag armored car. The General was, as usual, leading the forward-most units of his Army, at significant risk to his personal safety, but to the great delight of his men that idolized him for it.

  The Desert Fox looked at the nondescript town that had seen so much war, and he decided that it looked the part of what he'd seen five years past. Nothing impressive, and it was now pretty much a flattened piece of rubble. Of course, what caught his interest were the Allied defensive positions arrayed in front of his Army: trenches mostly, and some half-destroyed bunkers. The aerial recon missions he'd sent a few days before talked of maybe a couple of divisions at the most. Not much had been seen in terms of heavy guns or armor. It seemed like his Afrika Corps had destroyed everything the Allies had in the theater.

  Well, that was fine with the Desert Fox since he intended to go as deep as he could into Allied territory. He had a crazy dream of pushing all the way to Tripoli, or else be helpful to the Reich and force the Allies to send reinforcements to North Africa, which would help the Axis position in Europe as a whole.

  Satisfied with his own visual recon, he signaled the all troops forward with his right hand in a large semi-circular gesture. Engine around him revved up, and Panzers started to roll toward Tobruk, soon followed by the rest of Rommel's Army.

  Three days later, that saw intense fighting and some desperate resistance from the Allied forces left in the town, the 34th Indian and the 67th Division (Scottish Highlanders) surrendered to the inevitable, as Axis forces systematically destroyed most of their defenses. They were only left with the city's defensive perimeter in the extreme north by the Mediterranean Sea, without much supply and hope. And so they took the Axis offer of surrender before being obliterated by superior firepower.