Chapter 400122Chapter NaN

July 15, 1940

Moscow, Capital of the Soviet Union – The Kremlin

“Aaaargh!”

The man who made the entire Soviet Union tremble in fear, the head of the NKVD and the man called 'Stalin's dog,' Lavrentiy Beria, screamed as he collapsed to the floor.

“You bastard, how dare you!”

“G-General Secretary, Comrade! General Secretary, Comrade! It is not like that! General Secretary, Comrade!”

Beria scrambled to his feet, crawled across the floor, and grabbed Stalin's trouser leg.

“A m-misunderstanding, there must be some misunderstanding— Gyaaargh!”

Beria's broken glasses went flying with ating, tingsound as they hit the floor, and another of Stalin's loyal servants, Nikita Khrushchev, wore an expression that was neither a smile nor a frown as the glasses landed at his feet.

He met the eyes of the man beside him—The Red Army Chief of Staff, Georgy Zhukov, who wore a similar expression—and they both let out a small sigh.

“Misunderstanding? What damn misunderstanding!”

“Aaargh! Hngaargh!”

Still not satisfied, Stalin openly stomped on Beria's face with his foot, shouting frantically, while the mangled Beria could only scream miserably.

“You bastard were my hound! My hound! And yet, you dare! You dare deceive me!”

Having been beaten too severely, Beria lay twitching and bleeding on the floor, while Stalin, his old body having moved so violently, was panting and gasping for breath.

The failure of Beria's operation in Germany didn't matter.

It would have served as a pretext to keep Beria in check, but Stalin wouldn't have purged his most useful hound for something so minor.

The public perception was that Stalin was eccentric and merciless, and he wanted to be known as such, but as a seasoned politician, he had enough political sense to distinguish who was necessary to him.

But Beria had crossed the line.

“Not only did you hide the failure of the operation in Germany, but you pushed ahead despite the local agent's opposition, turning a potential success into a failure!”

Enraged, Stalin threw the telegram he had received onto Beria's bloodied face.

It stated that Trotsky, having survived an assassination attempt Stalin hadn't even known was underway, had openly given an interview to a Mexican newspaper, fiercely denouncing Stalin.

A flabbergasted Stalin investigated the matter, only to discover that Beria had been holding the NKVD agents' weaknesses over them, completely controlling them and even skipping his reports to him.

And in the process, Beria had dismissed the agent's opposition, who said more time was needed for Trotsky's assassination, and forced its execution.

“Keoheok, cough… G-General Secretary, Comrade, it is not like that…”

Beria tried to make an excuse, but Stalin, trembling with rage and betrayal, commanded.

“I needed a hound, not a dog that bites its master. Lavrentiy Beria.

You are sentenced to be hanged for treason. Drag him away!”

“H-huh! General Secretary, Comrade! General Secretary, Comrade! Spare me, please, please spare me!”

“Silence that noisy mouth of his too!”

In the Soviet Union, if the General Secretary gave an order, a bothersome trial was unnecessary.

No one questioned Stalin's decision, and none of the high-ranking Soviet officials present offered a defense for Beria, who was known for being human scum.

“General Secretary, Comrade! Spare me, General Secretary, Com— Mph- mmph! Mph! Mmmmph!”

Beria, who had been begging with tears streaming down his face, struggled desperately even after being gagged, but he was soon dragged away and disappeared from Stalin's sight.

“Hooo, damn it. The Trotskyists have been completely eradicated, haven't they?”

“W-Wasn't The Great Purge for that very purpose, General Secretary, Comrade? In the unlikely event there was anyone in the Soviet Union who would respond to that imperialist spy bastard, they are no more.”

Khrushchev chattered on, sweating profusely, but Stalin was glaring not at him, but at Zhukov.

“Chief of Staff.

I remember you saying you would take responsibility for the general officers released from the Gulag.”

“Of course, General Secretary, Comrade.

There is absolutely no need for the Comrade to worry—”

Even Zhukov, with his arrogant and harsh personality, had no intention of getting on the General Secretary's bad side right now, but Stalin cut him off.

“From now on, I will personally manage the NKVD.

Everyone here, remember that I am watching.”

“Yes, yes, sir! General Secretary, Comrade!”

Stalin looked at his hand, sticky with Beria's blood, twitched his mustache, and nervously pulled out a handkerchief, rubbing it vigorously.

“That Trotsky bastard's hands and feet have already been cut off.”

The Trotskyists within the Soviet Union, already few after Trotsky's own exile, had been completely wiped out by The Great Purge.

The Fourth International, which Trotsky had founded and which had angered Stalin by denying the Soviet Union's legitimacy, was also something Stalin knew well was not much of a threat in reality.

Lenin's testament was, in effect, close to acknowledging Trotsky as his successor, but in the end, there was no phrase appointing him as such.

Even if Lenin had made Trotsky his successor, the Soviet Union was already in Stalin's grasp, and all those who might have opposed him were either in their graves or rotting in the Gulag.

“That bastard can do nothing now.”

But saying so, as if to convince himself, brought little consolation.

Stalin stared at the handkerchief he had been obsessively rubbing his hands with.

The stain, dirtied by Beria's sticky blood, looked particularly unpleasant and filthy.

If washed, it would look as if it were never there.

But would it really?

“Throw it away.”

Stalin spoke nervously and tossed the handkerchief aside.

Khrushchev rushed over, bowing and scraping, picked it up, and left.

But even that display, which could be called excessive loyalty, got on Stalin's nerves.

Stalin watched the bald Khrushchev waddle out, then looked around, one by one, at the men in the room who were struggling to please him, forcing smiles.

If even a fellow who volunteered to bark like a dog, promising to dig up anything I disliked, stabs me in the back, who on earth can I trust?

Does such a thing as a trustworthy human even exist?

-

July 20, 1940

Southeastern Poland, Polish-Soviet Front, Lviv

The city where a large-scale cavalry battle had taken place on the eastern plains in March.

As a bridgehead to the west bank of the Bug River, Lviv, the core and strategic key point of Poland's defense line along the river, the Sikorski Line, was under fierce assault by the Soviet Army.

Where the last great cavalry battle had passed, the sound of horses' hooves striking the earth and the cries of masterless horses were no longer heard.

Instead, the roar of steel cannons shook the very foundations of the earth.

The Soviet artillery had bombarded the city for days, and the city, once home to hundreds of thousands of residents, had been reduced to complete ruins by the continuous shelling and bombing.

The desperate battle in the trench line before the city had long since ended, leaving only the desolate remnants of fierce resistance: countless corpses and the wreckage of tanks and other heavy equipment.

The battle was now being waged in the streets of Lviv.

“Aaargh, uwaaaargh!”

A Polish soldier, who had been tenaciously resisting from inside a building, stumbled out engulfed in the flames of a flamethrower, writhing in agony.

“Don't shoot! Let those damn Polski bastards just burn to death!”

The Poles' months-long resistance to defend their homeland had inflicted enormous sacrifices on the Soviet Army, inflaming the already poor national sentiment between them, and the Soviet soldiers, unnerved by the brutal urban warfare, were attacking with a vigor that seemed to intend to turn the city itself into a ruin.

In the eyes of the Soviet soldiers, who mechanically repeated the process of burning entire buildings and advancing, there was no distinction between soldier and civilian among the Poles burning to death with horrific screams.

The general commanding them, unlike other Soviet generals still reeling from the aftermath of The Great Purge, skillfully 'cleaned' the city's buildings sector by sector, mopping up the enemy.

It was thanks to his experience in urban warfare, which he had fought to the point of sickness in that hellish Spanish Civil War.

As the city neared its fall, General Enrique Líster watched through his binoculars as a Polish soldier, who had been taking cover and firing from the second floor of a building, was finally hit by a flamethrower and fell, screaming horribly.

-No Pasaran! (They shall not pass!)

The voices of his subordinates, echoing his broadcast in unison, rang as an auditory hallucination, but General Líster continued to walk on in silence.

He had seen an almost identical scene in his own country.

Back then, the ones burning and screaming were the Spanish people and subordinates he was supposed to protect, and he had been forced to just watch as they were brutally annihilated by the German Army's bombing.

He could not protect them.

The legitimate government of Spain, elected by the people's vote, had torn itself apart and finally ignited a civil war within the civil war, ultimately being trampled under the boots of fascists and meeting its downfall.

Some of the Republican faction's leadership, including himself, were lucky enough to find exile in the Soviet Union, but the majority were not.

That cursed Franco, upon taking Spain, chose not to strive for Spanish unity but to massacre everyone who had even the slightest connection to the Republican faction.

Leaving behind the despair and sorrow of his homeland, Líster had come to the Soviet Union, and was now personally burning the people and soldiers of an enemy nation supported by Germany, on his own orders.

When he lowered his binoculars, he saw the sight of a German-made Bf 109 fighter—the same type that had plunged the Republican air force into shock and terror in Spain—fleeing frantically before being caught in a coordinated attack by three Soviet I-16 fighters and shattered to pieces as it fell.

-Colonel, you must take cover!

The auditory hallucination of his adjutant lost in Spain could not stop his steps.

He walked past the mountains of countless corpses and wreckage toward the city streets.

“General.”

Líster, thinking it was another hallucination, ignored it and kept walking.

“General!”

Only then did General Líster turn, and his Russian adjutant approached him with a tense air.

The adjutant seemed intimidated by the vivid burn scar on Líster's left arm, visible in his short sleeves, a mark that seemed to have etched the horrors of the battlefield onto his very skin.

As the adjutant, flustered, swallowed dryly under the piercing gaze of the general from Spain, General Líster spoke first.

“Isn't it amusing?”

“Sir?”

“This is Poland, yet I feel as though I am fighting those German bastards.”

Líster surveyed the wreckage of German tanks, aircraft, and other equipment strewn across the battlefield and smiled faintly.

“Y-Yes, sir.”

Leaving the adjutant to wonder about the intention behind the terrifying foreign general's words, Líster continued.

“Our Spanish Republic was a perfectly legitimate government, chosen by the hands of the Spanish people in a vote. And yet, those fellows from the so-called 'Free World' just stood by and watched as my homeland burned, was destroyed, and finally fell into the clutches of those Nationalist bastards.”

The adjutant, seeing the general from Spain speak so much for the first time, couldn't decide what to say and just watched Líster's face.

“It was the German bastards, instigated by that Franco bastard, who led the charge in burning the freedom of the Spanish people.

And yet, the German regime, which came to power not by election but by a coup d'état, is now being hailed as the shield that will protect the freedom of Europe, all while they pay lip service to democracy.”

Speaking calmly, General Líster spun around and smiled faintly.

“By the very same fellows of the 'Free World' who stood by and watched the ruin of my homeland. Isn't that hilarious?”

The adjutant, feeling a chill from his smile, nodded vigorously.

“It is hilarious. Haha, hahaha!”

Dietrich Schacht.

That mere captain who, with an unheard-of utilization of an anti-aircraft gun, inflicted a crushing defeat in the Battle of Brunete, the last hope of the Spanish Republic, was now the de facto ruler of the self-proclaimed German Fourth Reich by the Emperor's appointment?

Líster cackled like a madman, and the adjutant, who was beginning to suspect this foreign general had suddenly gone insane, flinched and took a step back when he whipped his head around.

“So, what is it?”

“Sir? Ah, yes! General! It is a request from General Georgy Zhukov, the Chief of Staff of The Red Army at Stavka.

With the collapse of Poland imminent, he requests that you propose an operational plan in preparation for the case of Germany entering the war… sir…”

The adjutant, finally remembering the business for which he had stopped the general, spoke frantically, his words trailing off as General Líster suddenly approached him.

General Enrique Líster approached, gripped the adjutant's shoulder, and spoke in a gravelly voice.

“Adjutant.”

“Y-Yes, sir?”

Staring at the sweating adjutant, General Enrique Líster slowly opened his mouth.

His lips were unconsciously forming a wide smile.

“You cannot possibly imagine how happy I am right now.”