as the Dvina River, and stopped. Our line there is anchored on the Baltic coast at Riga, and while the Germans have a single bridgehead further east, it is well contained. There is only one panzer division assigned to this group, and it appears the Germans are not planning any offensive aimed at Leningrad.”
“That is a relief,” said Kirov. “We may avoid the misery of that thousand day siege that was so grimly depicted in the material.” He was referring to a cache of very secret documents he had collected during his numerous trips up the stairway at Ilanskiy during the revolution. With a history of WWII in hand, he had foreknowledge of how the Soviet Union would both suffer and yet prevail in the war against Germany, but this battle that had finally come was playing out much differently than in the material he had obtained.
“Yes,” said Berzin. “No thousand day siege, but that will also mean the resources the Germans threw at Leningrad will now be deployed elsewhere. There is a much heavier emphasis in the south, as we predicted.”
“And the center?”
“After Minsk fell, they have concentrated their panzer armies in a drive towards Smolensk. Unfortunately, Mogilev fell last night, and resources are becoming very strained. That counter offensive you ordered against Volkov has cost us. We’ve sent another fifty divisions to the Volga front, and for every one we send, he has managed to match us with reinforcements arriving from his outlying provinces.”
“Yet his forces there will be limited,” said Kirov.
“True, sir, but those were fifty divisions we could have used to save Minsk, and now it appears we may soon lose Kiev as well.”
“Can we stop the drive on Smolensk?”
“That remains to be seen. There is a big penetration south of Gomel now, and the entire center between Gomel and Mogilev is under pressure.”
“What about our secondary defensive line?”
“We still have troops digging in at Bryansk, but now we have more to worry about in the south.”
“The South? I thought we had contained the bridgehead over the Dnieper north of Zaporozhe?”
“We have, but the Germans forced another crossing west of Dnepropetrovsk. It’s that damnable SS Corps, their very best troops. They have spearheaded their entire effort in the south, once they get moving, they are very hard to contain. They broke out yesterday and pushed a strong attack north between Poltava and Krasnograd. A single brigade pushed all the way north to the outskirts of Karkhov, and today they have reinforced that penetration.”
“Kharkov? We cannot lose that industrial center—not at this stage. It must be held.”
“We’ve sent everything we could find there in the last two days. Zhukov managed to scrape up ten to twelve rifle divisions, pulling them from Orel, Voronezh, and as far north as the Leningrad sector. We’ve formed them into the 10th Field Army that was building at Penza. And we have also pulled the reserves slated to launch that offensive on the upper Volga.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Kirov. “That offensive will simply have to be delayed until we stabilize the main front against the Germans. But will it be enough to stop them?”
“Zhukov thinks we can, but now we must decide what to do with the troops along the Dnieper line. There are about 15 divisions holding from the breakthrough zone to Kiev, and another six to ten units at Kiev itself. Even if we do hold Kharkov, that German SS Corps could wheel west. Then the Panzer Army south of Gomel could act as the other pincer, and that entire force would soon be in a pocket. We cannot afford to lose another thirty or forty divisions in a cauldron battle. It would mean we would have to rebuild the entire front there between Kharkov and Bryansk, and we simply haven’t the troops and resources to do so at this time—they’re all on the Volga.”
“What about the new tank corps we’ve been forming.”
“It has been slow going,” said Berzin. “Two corps came out of the new factory sites in the Urals sector, and got pulled right into the buildup on the upper Volga for that offensive against Volkov’s 1st Army. Zhukov believes we are trying to do too much, too soon.”
“Yes,” said Kirov, “but Volkov has crossed the river north of Volgograd, and I will not allow him to push any farther into Soviet territory.”
“He is also pushing hard south of Rostov, though we’ve stopped him there—another seven rifle divisions that should be elsewhere, but at least our line