Chapter 166: The Polish Campaign (29)

"I won't leave, you cowards. I will live and die with Warsaw!"

He and President Mościcki were originally at odds. Now hearing that this coward was going to run away, Marshal Smigwe was angry and frustrated. Think about the past few years, when the Polish army beat the Soviets to a pulp and cut off a piece of meat from the Soviet territory. It was so glorious at that time, but now, everything is beyond their expectations.

Marshal Smigwe suddenly found that he didn't recognize the current war mode at all. They foolishly deployed a large number of troops on the border, hoping to block every attack direction of the German army, and also prepared a large number of cavalry to prepare to counterattack when the German team retreated under the pressure of the British and French armies.

General Louis Xiaoyou, commander of the French military delegation in Poland, was not optimistic about this defense mode. He tried to persuade Poland to give up some valuable areas in the west, such as the Silesia Industrial Zone, and then focus on defense on the right line of the Narew River and the Vistula River Basin, and make a step-by-step defense to delay time and wait for Britain and France to launch an attack on the Western Front.

However, this effort ultimately failed completely because of the stubbornness of the Poles. The Poles did not want to give up the densely populated western agricultural areas and industrial cities within a few hours of the start of the war. They were worried that doing so would wipe out their will to resist.

The result was that this defense line with no defensive thickness was easily surrounded, divided, and destroyed by the German mechanized forces!

Now there was only one way left, that was to defend Warsaw until Britain and France attacked Germany.

Just as he was about to deploy troops and prepare to defend Warsaw, the adjutant who had just left ran back in panic, bringing a more terrible news.

The Soviet Union had declared war on Poland without declaring war!

Ten minutes ago.

At the headquarters of the Rovno Army Group on the Eastern Front, Commander Slawek Rakovsky was holding a routine meeting of the military. Suddenly, the ground under his feet shook slightly, and there were continuous muffled sounds in the distance. He had participated in several wars and was very familiar with this feeling. He stood up. "Where is the shelling?!"

A staff officer ran in in a panic and shouted. "Commander, Commander, it's bad. The front-line positions are under heavy Soviet bombardment! The Soviets are attacking us!"

Everyone in the conference room changed their faces. Now Germany's attack in the west has reached the city of Warsaw. The situation is extremely urgent. At this time, the Soviets actually took advantage of the situation? ! "Impossible? Didn't we sign a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union?" An officer asked in disbelief. In July 1932, the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty was signed with Poland, which was valid for 10 years. This group of greedy Slavic gray animals blatantly tore up the agreement? !

Commander Rakovsky slammed the table and gritted his teeth. "These damn bastards! Dismiss, everyone return to their respective posts and fight back against these gray animals fiercely!" The treaty is a piece of waste paper. Even if the treaty is signed, it is prepared to be torn up. But at least you have to have some face, right? Germany attacked Poland and found the "Oles Village Massacre" as an excuse, but what about the Soviets?

This is intolerable, what is intolerable! !

"This bunch of damn Soviets!"

A curse rang out in the conference room of the Berlin Palace. "Damn Slavic beasts, so shameless." Everyone cursed these shameless Soviets. It was too shameless. When the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty was signed, it was agreed that the two countries would send troops to divide Poland. But after Germany began to attack Poland, these guys pretended to be deaf and dumb, neither declaring war nor sending troops. And Germany didn't care about anything, and wiped out the main force of Poland in one fell swoop. When it was about to destroy the whole of Poland, the Soviet Union shamelessly came to pick up the ready-made and compete with them for territory. Are there such shameless people in the world?

Everyone in the conference room was indignant, and only Yannick was very calm. Isn't the Soviet Union always like that?

When Molotov agreed so readily last time, he thought there would be something fishy.

Stalin didn't dare to declare war. One reason was that he was scared by Poland in the last Soviet-Polish War, and the other was that he was afraid of Britain and France behind Poland.

Now we see that Poland is so vulnerable that it was beaten to Warsaw by Germany in just a few days; and then we see that although Britain and France pretended to declare war on Germany, they did not send out a single soldier or fire a single shot. Stalin was certainly not a fool. He saw that Britain and France were indulging Germany, hoping to divert the trouble away, and fantasizing that Germany and the Soviet Union would go to war.

Therefore, it was crucial for the Soviet Union to establish the so-called "Eastern Defense Line" as soon as possible.

The Soviet Union's full-scale offensive caught Britain and France off guard, and Britain hurriedly stopped France's well-prepared second offensive plan. In their view, Poland was nothing compared to the threat of the Soviet Union advancing to the European land. If the Soviet Union and Germany could fight to the death, Poland would have made a significant contribution to Europe.

I don't know how the Poles would react if they knew that their allies, on whom they pinned all their hopes, had such dirty thoughts.

Relying on the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, Poland deployed 7 armies with 1 million troops on the German-Polish border, and another 5 armies with 500,000 troops on the Soviet-Polish border, and most of these 500,000 troops were second-line troops. Just when everyone thought that the Soviet army would break through the Polish defense line like the German army and penetrate into the heart of Poland, a surprising situation occurred.

The first batch of Soviet troops that launched a full-scale attack was easily stopped by the Polish army. The Soviet army was hit by a fierce counterattack by the Polish army before it crossed the border for five kilometers. The Soviet army was defeated and fled back to the place where they started.

After counting, the Soviet army found that more than 60,000 people failed to escape from this attack, and more than 40,000 lightly wounded soldiers were able to escape by themselves.

Obviously, these more than 60,000 Soviet soldiers were either seriously injured or killed in battle, or captured or missing.

There were more weapons lost. Most of these Soviet soldiers who escaped were empty-handed, and no one knew where the weapons they had when they set out were lost.

There were 200 tanks involved in the attack, most of which were T-26 light tanks with a pitiful 15 mm armor protection.

In addition to conventional anti-tank weapons, Poland also has an advanced anti-tank rifle. The M35 anti-tank rifle that successfully fired bullets and used a traditional rotating rear-pull bolt was successfully developed at the end of 1935.

Its biggest feature is that it fires tungsten alloy bullets, which was the top technology at the time. Other countries were shocked when they learned about it. A rifle that looks simple and ordinary has such strong penetration, and it seems to have an irresistible penetration power! At first, the outside world only noticed the oversized shell of the bullet, and did not know that it was the tungsten alloy bullet in the bullet that played a role. Later, similar tungsten alloy bullets appeared in Germany and the Soviet Union, but the application of tungsten alloy in bullets has always been recognized as Poland's achievement.

As a result, half of these thin-skinned and large-filled T-26 light tanks were destroyed on the battlefield.

The Soviet ground forces were vulnerable, and the air force was not much better. In the Spanish Civil War, the German Air Force accumulated a lot of combat experience, but the Soviet Air Force only increased a lot of casualties.

As a result, facing the old aircraft of the Polish Army, the Soviet Air Force did not take much advantage, and the battle loss ratio of both sides remained at a level of one to one.

The enraged Stalin mobilized 700,000 reserve troops and 1.4 million troops marched into Poland in a mighty force, and the war escalated in an all-round way.