Chapter 250
Yuri actually doesn't like Moscow, and of course, he doesn't like to join in any of the fun in Moscow. But then again, when a person lives in this world, he often cannot live completely according to his own preferences. For the sake of his future or for other reasons, he always needs to compromise his preferences to accommodate reality.
Moscow chose a very good time to organize the prisoner parade. It was exactly the fifth day after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, which was the third day after Molotov made a clear statement to the Polish government in exile on behalf of the Soviet government. At the same time, it was also the second day when the Soviet army slowed down its frontal offensive against Warsaw.
The focus of the whole world was drawn to this massive parade of prisoners of war. There were hundreds of media outlets from more than 40 countries who applied to enter Moscow for interviews.
This parade of prisoners of war pulled the protests of the Polish government in exile off the headlines, and no one paid attention to them anymore. Of course, this also made the British and American governments really relieved - the Poles' influence on the world was not as great as they imagined. At least, when their size was placed on the same scale as the Soviet Union, any country knew how to choose.
…
Moscow, Central Hippodrome.
It was just half past five in the morning, the sky was just beginning to brighten, the thin mist at the edge of the jungle had not yet dissipated, but the silence had been dispelled by the deafening sound of horse hooves.
Outside the camp specially used to accommodate German prisoners of war, a Soviet general in his forties, wearing a blue uniform, rode out of the camp on horseback. With an expressionless face, he pulled the reins in front of the checkpoint where two heavy machine guns were mounted, then jumped off his horse.
"Comrade General Pavel Artemyevich," a colonel hurried over, saluted, and shouted, "Comrade Alexander Sergeyevich is here."
The general on horseback was Artemyev from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. His current military rank was General and he was the commander of the Moscow Military District. Yes, a general from the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the commander of the Moscow Military District. However, he had never had any experience in commanding frontline battles. The closest he had been to the battlefield was when he commanded the construction of fortifications during the Battle of Moscow.
As for Alexander Sergeyevich, he is naturally referring to the current Moscow Municipal Party Committee Secretary Sherbakov.
Recently, Sherbakov's health condition was very poor. He stayed in bed all day, and his fat face became thinner. But even so, he still attended the event today, as if he was going to give all his light and heat to the Soviet motherland.
Of course, Sherbakov did not come to the racecourse alone. He was accompanied by a large group of people, including Yuri, who represented the General Staff to attend the event.
There were as many as 75,000 German prisoners of war who were forced to participate in the parade, with more than 100 square formations. For such a large parade team, safety issues were naturally taken into consideration, such as how to deal with the prisoners of war in case of a riot, how to deal with the citizens of Moscow in case of a conflict with the prisoners of war, etc. This kind of thing cannot go wrong at all, otherwise, the show of face will turn into a shameful thing, and people will definitely die in the end.
In order to share the risk and speed up the parade, the parade was divided into two routes. The main route started from the Central Hippodrome, with a total of 50,000 people, including 1,227 officers and 19 generals . The parade team will start from the Central Hippodrome, enter the city along the Leningrad Highway, go to Gorky Street, and then, after arriving at Mayakovsky Square, go to the Garden Ring Road, go half a circle clockwise, and finally arrive at Kursk Railway Station.
The other route starts from the Dynamo Stadium. The first half of the journey is the same, but after reaching the Garden Ring, they have to go counterclockwise to Lenin Street and finally arrive at Riga Railway Station.
The distance is not short. It takes about six or seven hours to walk. In other words, if they set out at eight o'clock, it will be dusk when they finish the journey. The prisoners will definitely not have lunch. Therefore, in order to allow them to complete the journey smoothly, they have to be given a snack this morning.
As a general who had never been on the battlefield, Artemyev's rank of general was very unfounded. So, even though he had the same rank as Yuri and was much older, he still had to bow his head in front of Yuri.
As for Sherbakov, he was even more incomparable. The two had very different statuses in Stalin's mind.
After listening to the report from the colonel, Artemyev did not dare to delay. He hurriedly handed the horse to the colonel and walked quickly forward to greet him.
I don’t know if it was affected by the illness, but Comrade Sherbakov, who used to love to laugh, now has a stern face almost all day long, as if everyone in the world owed him two years of life. Yuri followed behind him and didn’t care about his stinky face - caring about these trivial things with a dying person would only show your own low status for no reason.
The two sides met, and when Artemyev saluted him, Yuri symbolically returned the salute and began to think about his own things.
As the Soviet army reversed the situation on the Western Front, the situation in the whole world seemed to be changing.
First, the Finns showed signs of surrender. Helsinki was seeking peace talks with Moscow. This time, the Finns gave up all the conditions they had insisted on before and almost accepted all the harsh demands put forward by Moscow. They even began to prepare to expel the German troops stationed in Finland.
But the Germans are gods, easy to invite but hard to send away. It is estimated that the two allies are preparing for a big fight in the near future.
In addition to Finland, Japan in the east has also started to make frequent moves recently. Just after returning to Moscow yesterday, Yuri received a letter from the assistant military attaché of Japan to the Soviet Union. Yuri did not even read the content of the letter and directly asked Arseni to send it to the General Political Department of the Army and Navy. He did not intend to cause any trouble for himself.
As the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, although Yuri was not responsible for diplomatic affairs, he still had some understanding of the situation in the Far East and Japan's political direction. He had seen relevant documents from Comrade Stalin.
As the situation in the Soviet-German War changed, Japan, which had probably received intelligence about the Tehran Conference, began to worry about being attacked by the Soviet Union, and began to seek the Soviet Union's neutral position in the war against Japan.
Just a while ago, Yuri had just read a new clause of the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Agreement submitted by Japanese Ambassador to the Soviet Union Sato Naotake.
Four years ago, at the beginning of the Soviet-German War, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a Soviet-Japanese non-aggression agreement. When signing the agreement, the Soviet Union made great concessions in order to avoid being attacked by Japan, including recognizing Japan's occupation of the southern part of Sakhalin Island.
Now, in order to continue this agreement, which is due to expire next year, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made greater concessions, including: Japan withdrawing from the southern part of Sakhalin Island; ceding the northern part of the Kuril Islands; abandoning the Soviet-Japanese Fisheries Agreement signed four years ago; allowing Soviet ships to pass freely through the Tsugaru Strait; abolishing the Anti-Comintern Pact; allowing the Soviet Union to expand its influence in China and the "Greater Japan Co-Prosperity Sphere", and so on.
There were many people in the Soviet Union, especially among the diplomatic high-ranking officials in Moscow, who were interested in conditions like these. Comrade Molotov was one of them. However, they were strongly opposed by the People's Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff. Senior generals of the older generation, such as Voroshilov and Timoshenko, as well as young senior generals, such as Zhukov, Vasilevsky and Yuri, all opposed renewing the non-aggression pact with Japan.
Of course, the most important thing was that Stalin himself opposed the renewal of the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, and he had already begun planning to launch a full-scale attack on Japanese imperialism.
As the Chief of Operations of the General Staff, when he returned to Moscow, Yuri had received requests to pay more attention to the Japanese military strength and deployment in the Far East. The intelligence agencies of the General Staff had begun to increase their efforts to collect relevant intelligence.
As a reborn person, Yuri was actually very interested in this Eastern war, but unfortunately, although he received a notice to pay attention to Japan's military strength and deployment, the formulation of the entire anti-Japanese combat plan was not led by him. This work was handed over to Comrade Vasilevsky.
In the formulation of this operational plan, Vasilevsky took a more conservative stance. When he received the order to formulate the plan, he proposed that launching a strategic landing campaign to attack the Japanese mainland was too difficult and uncertain. Therefore, his plan would mainly focus on attacking the Japanese Kwantung Army in Northeast China, and implementing landing operations in Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. After controlling the Soya and Nemuro Straits, he would seek a military strike against the Japanese mainland.
This plan is still under development. Yuri has not seen the final plan yet, so he cannot make any suggestions. However, he hopes that as soon as the war against Japan is launched, the three major air force bases of the Far East Military Region will be the core, and long-range aviation will carry out bombing on the Japanese mainland.
To this end, he prepared to submit a plan, proposing that after the end of the war against Germany, the current five long-range bomber aviation armies be transferred to the Far East to form a long-range aviation group that can provide strategic support to the army.
