There were many paintings in the halls of that gallery, sculptures, even original writings of old poets such as Pushkin, it was the best one could find of Russian culture which had been moved into what Russia now was, a vast expanse between the Volga river and the Pacific Ocean, surrounded on all sides by the Reich or by the Chinese, it was a nation under siege but that mentality was not new. This exposition in Perm was meant to symbolize a rebirth of that city, a Russian City which had incorporated all the resilience and stoicism of it's people. The Tsar had given great resources to the reconstruction of the West following the Ural War, the first significant victory Russia had in years. Cities and towns such as Perm, Orenburg, Izhevsky, Orsk, Brisk, Kambarka, Chernushka and Tchaikosvky had all received the titles of "Hero Cities of the Empire", a few of them even suffering Nuclear attacks and having to be rebuilt from the ground up or from rubble once the radiation was vanished. The German ambitions were frustrated thanks to their sacrifice and now, in the year of 1962, most of them were on their way to finish reconstruction and the government was eager to showcase this cultural triumph through the exposition.
In that exposition, there was a painting which Lieutenant Morozkin could watch for hours only to dwell in the memories, one of fishermen from the Volga river dragging a wooden boat to catch their daily prize. He stood tall for his age, but for any man or woman who saw him, and especially for the children, he appeared at first glance to look a decade older than he truly was. Perhaps because of the sharpnel scar in his cheek from when a German artillery shell fell near his position during the war, perhaps because the conflict did leave him look more strict and stoic, a quality many admired in the country, or maybe it was the medal which he always used in his attire. He bled and made others bleed, killed and was almost killed for that medal and he would not go anywhere without showing everyone that he was a hero, as the Tsar said he was.
He was in the Volga, the great river which was once the heartland of Russia, now it was the final frontier, the border, because right across, the Germans were awaiting with the largest standing formation of the Wehrmacht, and the Russians in turn awaited with one of the largest armies in the world, of which he was part. Even if after the war there was a demobilization, even if some wanted a return to normalcy, everyone knew that there could be no normality while the Germans lived. He was too young to remember the first invasion, when his parents left Leningrad and crossed the Volga to live in Kazan, only to flee again once the German lapdogs and collaborators crossed the border during the bloody civil war, living like nomads and going from place to place depending on the rations being distributed. The 40s were a dark time, he could remember that, but he could not remember the German, he could not remember the ones to blame, the cause of everything.
Four years earlier, he did see the German in it's full strength, but before that he had seen them in the eyes of the refugees, whenever boats would cross the Volga, full of starved refugees, full of peoples of all languages crossing into Russia, a country he always knew for it's harshness, and thanked God for being able to be there. When he saw people break into tears of relief and cry out of joy for being able to live in the nation which, for most of the world, was a synonym of brutality, they were singing praises and dancing as if they reached heaven while he saw Russia as a purgatory for most of his life. He still loved his country, of course, he would not forget his parents' sacrifice by abandoning it like his brother did, but even he recognized it was not an easy life, and yet those people were telling him stories from across the Volga that left him the impression that the gates of hell were right across that river. "Whatever a German touches, turns into venom" his mother once said, and he almost felt like the land across had this dark air that was like an old story of good and evil. He could see the Germans too, men in grey uniforms, men in black uniforms, men in camouflaged uniforms, spy planes, monstrous war machines, they looked like an ever-looming threat, and he knew in other stations it looked worse because they did have footholds across the Volga in places such as Samara.
Then one day they all crossed, and it was at that moment he stopped looking at the painting and went back to walking. Yes, he did put up a bravado, but no man could come out of that war with indifference, not when he saw the flames of hell, when he saw the atomic fire in this very city. He was not in it that day, but they all knew it would come as soon as reports came of the enormous canon the Germans were bringing, they all left the city, with an advanced force left in the kilometers of underground bunkers and tunnels beneath Perm to strike the Teuton foe by surprise when they believed their flames to have cleansed the city of enemies. He was not one of those underground, rather he was one of the men who was to lead the assault to prevent their retreat. He saw the flames, a blinding light like a second sun, then the shockwave, the heat wave, he saw it spreading into the city, and he would still see it another time before the war ended and he understood what kind of monster they were fighting, why so many were relieved to escape from them.
As he walked, he saw a group of children, a classroom apparently, led in by a teacher to look at the wonderful windows to the soul of Russia. Many looked at him while he walked on the other side of the hallway, headed to the exit, and there was a sense of amusement from them. They probably saw soldiers before, as everyone did, but he was a Lieutenant, and he was wearing his uniform today even if he was not really on duty, which was a common practice in this region. Then someone broke ranks from the children and hurried across the hallway before the teacher could stop him, it was a young boy holding a piece of paper, and he trailed behind Morozkin with a glow in his eyes that made the officer stop. The kid raised up his paper, it was a drawing he made, with a soldier standing ahead of children, apparently shooting some twisted grey human that was meant to be a German. And right above there were the words "Thank You" written in them. Morozkin humored the child, taking the paper, patting his head and even smiling to him, replying with his own thanks to the boy who returned back to his group. Did he know that boy? Or his family? Unlikely, but he was a soldier, and there was no profession now in the entire country which was as respected. This is what he was fighting for, to preserve this harsh country from something worse, perhaps naively hoping that one day, that generation would do better.
For the first time in twenty years, the Russian troops had crossed the Volga river to the west. It was an assault long awaited, ever since the Soviet troops were force to withdraw in 1943, after the long and grueling years of the Civil War, after resisting the Reich's offensive in the Urals, today was the day to finally pay them back and there was no better opportunity. The original plan had been for a winter offensive in January while a substantial force of the Wehr and the Luftflotte V was drawing in the air force into Israel, that would have been the Tsar's way to show some "solidarity" with the Jewish State, although many Russians saw the Jews as no different from the Reich, the majority of the government, including the Tsar, was pragmatic enough to seize this chance. That plan was delayed, but when news came on the 7th of Goebbels' death and of Speer's death on the 8th with the Reich reaching to call for a ceasefire, Operation Poltava was greenlit immediately with the attack beginning on the evening of the 8th to the 9th of February with the largest offensive operation in Russian History.
There were many years of preparation before this strike, ever since the Ural War, there were plans to continue the war and strike back against the Germans, plans which were shuffled in 1959 with the end of the War. But the High Command of the Empire was well aware that any peace with the Reich, especially the Reich led by the outspoken militant Joseph Goebbels, would be temporary and the next conflict had to be fought in the Russian terms. The 6 and a half years between the end of the Ural War and the start of Operation Poltava were spent in a constant state of war weariness and readiness, with weekly drills in towns and cities across the country to protect against attacks of chemical and nuclear weapons, with the formation of the so called "reconstruction brigades" which conscripted civilians to work on the reconstruction of the West Russian cities and infrastructure (although the great majority of it's members were volunteers), the extension of the military service and constant military exercises, as well as the enlistment of a new generation of officers and the change in the military curriculum of the military academies in order to adapt the armed forces from the recent lessons.
The Russian economy returned to a war footing in 1965 with the rising tensions in the Middle East, there were many signs of a Russian buildup across the border which were practically ignored by Joseph Goebbels during that year for sake of his obsession in destroying Israel and the Western powers, Goebbels saw the Russians as a beaten enemy who would take a generation to even recover from the Ural War, vastly overestimating the devastation inflicted by the Wehrmacht and underestimating the efforts undertaken by Tsar Andrey's government to restore the country to it's war footing. Perhaps it was a level of Goebbels' own racial prejudices, perhaps because the idea of an Eastern War was a far less popular among the Germans as a purely anti-semitic war against the Jewish State with the Star of David in it's flag, or perhaps because the constant purges of the SS also included several SD agents responsible for monitoring the Eastern Frontier and replaced it with unexperienced men who many times gave false alarms, some leaked by the Russian Intelligence itself, who gave a "crying wolf" effect that deafened the Reich when the surprise attack finally came.
The forces gathered for Operation Poltava began to be organized during the autumn of 1965 and the mobilization order was given on the 18th of December when the war with Israel began, the plan for the operation consisted of two main assaults: The Northern Front and the Southern Front, the former commanded by the former Soviet Marshal Giorgy Zhukov and the latter commanded by the White Veteran, Marshal Vladimir Kharzhevsky. The Northern Front, contrary to it's name, concentrated it's offensive across the central plains of Western Russia with the goal of reclaiming Moscow and, if possible, Smolensk, responsible for the offensive in the Reichskommissariat of Moscowien, while the Southern Front targeted the Don river basin with the goal of overruning the lands of the Volga Germans and cutting off the Caucasus, the main source of petrol and several mineral resources of the Reich, from Germania itself by land. Furthermore, a force was assembled on the Caspian sea to launch an invasion of the Kaukasus, specifically the rich petrol-producing lands of the former Azerbaijan.
Perhaps the greatest trump card for the Russian Empire was the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, the first Russian Atomic device was tested in secret near the artic circle, close to the city of Norilsk, a 30 Kiloton bomb, from there on the tests would be conducted in underground facilities, the main one north of the city of Tomsk, the nuclear ambiguity was kept purposefully until the start of the war when, publicly, the Tsar announced the possession of a Nuclear device during his speech declaring the start of Operation Poltava, threatening the Reich with the destruction of a German city for each Russian city targeted by the bombs. At first it was believed to be a bluff, but after the detonation of a bomb in Haifa by the Israeli forces, the threat of an enemy possessing an atomic arsenal of their own was looming over the heads of the German leadership.
Speaking of German leadership, the success of the Russian offensive was secured by said leadership, especially due to the recent powergrab by Marshal Remer and the order of surrender to the Volkssturm. The Reichskommissariats of Don-Wolga, under Karl Asmus and Kaukasus under Rolf Karbach, were fiercely devoted to Joseph Goebbels with both leaders being members of the Volkssturm, after the announcement of Speer's rise, they quickly began to make moves against the Wehrmacht in their territories, which they held under Iron grip with the support of the local Volkssturm, mostly made up by settler-colonists sent to the east under Darré's "Blood and Soil" approach to the Lebensraum in the years of 1960-1966. The Wehrmacht command in those territories was assaulted as both leaders would continue to declare allegiance to Joseph Goebbels, refusing to believe that he had been killed and instead this was a repeat of Naumann's putsch. Even after the failure of Hoffmann's march and Remer's more direct seizure of power, both territories were still in rebellion against Germania, with only Ostland and Ukraine properly announcing their allegiance to Remer. Siegfried Kasche kept an uneasy neutrality in Moscowien which was only settled with the news of the assault that led to him swearing his allegiance to Remer.
Furthermore, many of the soldiers sent to man the eastern defenses were made up by the Volkssturm, again due to Goebbels' and Darré's ideological view for the east which was inspired by the roman Veteran Colonies and Hitler's view of social darwinism, where the settlers in the east were meant to be reshaped by it's conditions into fighters and the lands in the east would function similarly to medieval Marks as a "frontier" territory. As a result, many of the defenses had large holes easy to be exploited by the Russians as the Wehrmacht fought a de-facto civil war in the east against such units and, with their surrender, had to transfer them to the West for imprisonment, which overloaded the train tracks and roads with troops headed westwards. There was no better time to strike than the 8th to the 9th of February of 1966, there was no better hope or opportunity, the formidable German defenses on the Volga were undermanned with a portion of it extending from Samara to the Or river being kept by the Volkssturm, a rival and undisciplined organization to the Wehrmacht which was in open rebellion against Germania, fighting for a dead man.
And so began Operation Poltava at exactly 0200 AM on the 9th of February of 1966, with the largest artillery barrage ever unleashed from a buildup of almost 7 years, missiles rained down in a stretch of 30 miles between the German front and it's rearguard, several partisan cells, operating within the Reich's vast territory, carried a coordinated act of sabotage in roads, railroads, bridges, radio towers, electric cables and armament depots. The feared Atomic Guns of the Reich were neutralized within minutes by the combined air-land strike while the Russian infantry crossed the frozen Volga river to assault the German defenses on foot, a total of 4 million soldiers engaging in the offensive across two fronts, in total, 5% of the Russian population would be mobilized for this offensive, with an aerial offensive coordinated with the tactic missile strikes at German airfields and radar stations as far back as the outskirts of Adolfsburg. The capture of the banks of the Volga river took a matter of minutes and, with the bridgeheads established, the Russian armored forces were able to cross the Volga to reach the enemy territory, with an assault awaited for over a generation being unleashed with an unmatched level of coordination in the Russian Army after years of training and the advancements in communications technology.
Within only 24 hours, 170 thousand soldiers of the Wehrmacht and Volkssturm alike would be captured, the Russian troops crossed the Volga river and the western half of the city once named Kazan was retaken, as well as a general collapse in the German forces between the Volga and Or rivers. The success of the assault was almost unexpected by the Russian High Command's wildest expectations, Zhukov, who led the forces of the Northern Front, believed that the plans to reach the city of Moscow before April could be achieved if the momentum was kept through a front-wide offensive. There were roughly a million and a half Germans to man the eastern border following the downsizing of the Wehrmacht after the Ural War and the transfer of assets to the Levant, and 400 thousand of those were members of the Volkssturm in the Southern front who were shattered by the Russian offensive with the cities of Samara and Saratov being both lost within a week while the Russians reached Astrakhan on the 14th of February.
Furthermore, Karbach refused to believe the Wehrmacht's signals of a coming offensive across the Caspian sea, the suspicious Reichskommissar believed that the suggestion for the leadership to evacuate Baku and head to the city of Lindau (formerly Grozny) was a trap by Remer loyalists to assassinate him and seize back the territory, he was still unaware of the wider attack happening that night. The Russian amphibious assault was carried out alongside an aerial strike on Baku's port facilities and a landing on the northern part of the Peninsula at the town formerly known as Sumgayit, a total of 30 thousand men including airborne units would assault the city and establish a bridgehead with Karbach at first believing it was a strike by Wehrmacht loyalists against him, only too late did he realize the gravity and ordered a general withdrawal, but he was one of the few who was able to escape to Lindau while Baku itself was taken alongside 15 thousand prisoners. Karbach's helicopter would be shot down by a Russian jet near the Caucasian mountains and he would die in the crash, creating a power vacuum in the region as the Volkssturm lost it's local leadership and the morale collapsed.
Adolfsburg was once the city of Stalingrad, the city in which the Soviets lost the war, Stalin's ego directed his efforts towards the south in ill-advised and rushed offensive operations to reclaim the city which bore his name and controlled the gateway to the Caucasus, so much so that he spent precious resources in it that could not be later spared to defend Moscow from falling to the forces of the Axis in the end of 1942. Now Adolfsburg was suffering two invasions, from the West the Wehrmacht would mobilize it's assets and strike the Don-Wolga region to overthrow the mutinous Volkssturm, whereas from the east, soldiers from the Volkssturm were fleeing into the city and were setting up defenses to defend it from the advancing Russian Forces. The first contact between Kharzevsky's Southern Front and the city happened on the 16th of February as the Russian forces, following a week of advance, reached the eastern outskirts of the city and fought the vicious and fanatic defense of the Volkssturm under Asmus, joined together with forces from the Kaukasus and German conscripts from the nearby towns. The Russians, following the capture of the former city of Saratov further north, would cross the Volga and begin a general offensive into the city from the North and East while a bombing campaign ravaged the settlement which bore the name of Adolf Hitler.
The proud Volga-German Karl Asmus was a man who practically worshipped Goebbels, who he considered a savior of the Volga Germans after the previous agreement secured their release from decades of Russian custodianship in the Ural War and who received some of the most fertile lands in the east as settlement. Asmus considered Remer a traitor who either had Joseph Goebbels under custody or assassinated him, either way he was a reactionary usurper unfit to rule the Reich. In both Wolga and the Kaukasus, the men still saluted with the "Heil Goebbels" salute, the Volkssturm overwhelmed the local Wehrmacht and took the majority of their heavily outnumbered men as prisoners, there was a plan to ally with Siegfried Kasche and march westwards into Germania, rallying the German Volk to overthrow Remer's Military rule, a plan which was practically impossible to succeed and now was impossible to be even put into action due to the Russian Assault. Asmus would finally admit defeat as he ordered the Volkssturm to fight to the last in Adolfsburg and promptly fled to Rostow, surrendering himself and Don-Wolga to the leadership of the Wehrmacht. General Heinrich Eberbach would receive his surrender and was given the overall command of the defense of the Caucasus and the Volga by Remer on the 19th, the same day where Adolfsburg's eastern half was captured and when Russian armored forces arrived north of the city.
The Volkssturm was given the order to abandon Adolfsburg and reorganize in the west across the Don river where the Wehrmacht prepared a counter attack, many refused to leave, ended up encircled in the city and captured within the next week as the Russians seized Adolfsburg, ceremonially renaming it as Tsaritsyn. Combined with the capture of Astrakhan, the Volga was crossed in the south and the plains of the Don were open for conquest with the disarray of the Volkssturm and the fall of the Caucasian warlord. The first major check to the Russian advance in the Southern Front was the fight over the Don river against General Eberbach's forces which, despite being outnumbered roughly 3:1, were able to conduct a successful fighting withdrawal and fought the spread Russian forces in detail with his faster divisions. However, after the fall of Lindau/Grozny in March, with Russian forces seizing the entire Caspian coastline, the majority of the Northern Caucasus was successfully taken by the time April arrived, with the Germans still able to hold Georgia, the former city of Krasnodar and, most importantly, the city of Rostov, successfully defended by the newly promoted Field Marshal Eberbach against the overextended Russian forces on the 8th of April and, as the road conditions became worse, both sides would have to settle down in their frontlines and reorganize the supply lines.
To the North, Zhukov faced the full strength of the Wehrmacht in Moscowien, and yet the initial offensive was no less successful. The deportation of millions of Russians and Ukrainians from the Don region following the creation of the Don-Wolga led to millions of resentful exploited civilians to be sent to Moscowien, acting as a fertile soil for partisan activity which worked constantly to undermine the German logistical networks. Yet, after two decades of rule, much of the East was considered as relatively pacified by the Reich, the logistical challenges of Operation Barbarossa now worked in favor of the Reich, a substantial amount of German soldiers was even recruited among an entire generation which was born in the immediate aftermath of the war in the first settlements in the east established around 1944 and 1945, who knew the terrain as their own home. Theodor Tolsdorff, a general of Remer's generation which arose in ranks in the post-war era and attained the rank following the Ural War, was promoted as Marshal and charged with the defense of Moscowien. The Wehrmacht conducted a withdrawal after the Russian breakthrough and Siegfried Kasche would be ordered to relocate from Wesselstadt, formerly Moscow, to the west, alongside the local apparatus of the government. Moscow itself would be the target of a fierce battle at the end of March of 1966.
Lieutenant, or rather now, Major Morozkin, was in the thick of the fighting on the late days of march, it was the 29th in his account, the fourth day of the assault against the German defenses of Wesselstadt, a name he refused to pronounce and dared any man in his unit to speak if they would live to be in a shoveling duty. This was Moscow, the legendary city itself, the heart, the birthplace of Russia itself, but he did not recognize the city from the paintings, where were the domes of the hundreds of churches that made the sunrise reflect on the horizon? Where was the Kremlin with it's mighty crimson walls where the Tsars of old ruled over the largest nation on earth? Where were the Russians?
He was inside a building they were using as a headquarters in their assault into the city itself, the details were disturbing, there were swastikas, there were German newspapers, there were German paintings, there was a German breed of dog when they came, there were German drinks and food labeled with German words. Was this really the heart of Russia or did they just arrive in Germania? No, from all sources he heard, Germania was a Metropolis of millions which dwarfed this glorified town, a city with an architecture that had nothing of majestic or Russian, they could very well be in the middle of Bavaria. All while they looked at a map which showed Russian names to neighborhoods which no longer existed, buildings long demolished, streets long renamed, as part of an even greater plan to reclaim lands that were said to be Russian.
Of course there were Russians around, in the way here they passed by large farms, small towns, a mix of both, where the German occupants were either dispatched or fled west, the locals looked at him as if he was an angel, an angel covered in blood, ash and sweat. They spoke in a rather odd accent with words he never heard, but still so many of them were grateful, those poor thin souls who were so eager to grab a rifle and join them in their march west. In other places he could very well have been a demon, because the younger ones looked at him as if he had slaughtered a member of their families. Some of them claimed to not have a name when asked, others had a germanic-sounding name, others just tried to avoid even looking at him. One was bold enough to claim they were here to kill them and slaughter the land, he attempted to correct them, but only for them to double down and even say "You Russian savages only bring death, the Reich brings us peace". That odd young man was the one who astonished him the most, he claimed to be a Muscovite, an Untermenschen, not a Russian, he was not the only one to say that, the children were more visceral with their hatred, in one settlement, a group of locals was even shooting at them.
That is what astonished him most, there were a few Russians who were shooting at them and defending the same maniacs who worked them on a daily basis to near death.
How could anyone be standing up for their slave masters was a shock to him, it made him look past that for each one who did this, there were ten or twenty grateful souls who took the path to the east to stay out of the zone of conflict. The High command expected that, claiming that they had units and companies to escort entire caravans with thousands of people to the east of the Volga where they could stay away from the thick of the fighting. But those "Russians", who acted like a beaten dog defending a brutal owner, were what broke his heart, this and the fact that the very heart of Russia looked like a German town put into a new light what this offensive was. It did not feel like a return to a home he could barely remember, or the reclamation of their ancestral land like the commissars claimed, it felt like they were being the invaders of a German land, freeing their slaves and yet still being outsiders.
Now they were fighting over Wesselstadt, a brutal fight just as the last snow was thawing, the fight here took longer than it should have, the Wehrmacht was bringing in more and more reinforcements and they had few choices other than to continue the frontal assault and the brutal fighting street by street while artillery shells and rockets rained down on the city, being shot from both sides. Morozkin and his company lost more fighting in this city than they lost in the previous month entirely, they were not facing untrained conscripts or the Volkssturm, they were facing one of the best armies in the world and the fight over the skies was more and more contested from what he heard, the Germans were coming and there were more of them every day, even if they took the city, even if they had time to dig down during the Autumn mud season, the summer would bring a vengeance, they would have to give everything they had and fight twice as hard as they ever fought to survive that summer.
There could not have been a more critical time for the Reich to be invaded than the aftermath of the Day of the Four Leaders, but one consequence was that the reign of Remer became more secure than any Führer before at the start of their reign, Hitler had to deal with the establishment, Hess had to deal with opposition within the party and military, Goebbels had to deal with the SS, the Party and the almighty corporate structures, Speer, if one would count him, had no power at all in practice and he realized that in his first and only meeting, but Remer? The Volkssturm was crushed and it's remnants were shattered by the Russians themselves, and the Russian invasion, the first time that German soil was struck in decades by a land invasion by a threatening horde, ensured that all would look up to the Wehrmacht. The Party, the Workers, the People, every single organization in the Reich, eventually even the Volkssturm, had to turn to him and his Steel Legion to safeguard them from a vengeful slavic horde arisen from the history books.
The scale of the Mobilization was practically unmatched in German history, the rapid advance, the tens of thousands of refugees arriving on a weekly basis to tell stories of terror gave a propaganda coup that even Goebbels was never able to match: The idea of defending the Fatherland from a real threat, not the small state of Israel, but of the largest nation on Earth extending from the Volga to the pacific. A people who spent years under the thumb of a heavy regime of propaganda that was now whipped into a frenzy to face their old foe in the east and protect the conquests of the previous generation. There was a considerable amount of revisionism in the Reich as well at the time, the Ural War seen more and more as a justified preemptive strike which was now vindicated by the Russian show of force, a nation long underestimated which was believed by Goebbels to be unable to launch a major offensive.
The German Industry and War Machine was put into action, Martial Law was declared on the Eastern Territories through Remer's first directive that declared Germany to be in a State of Total War to repeal the Slav invasion. The recruitment centers were overflowing, especially by former Volkssturm members who appeared all too eager to continue unleashing their violent tendencies and set themselves on a better look by the new order. The mobilization across the workplace, in industries, in the fields, across all sectors and services in Germany was issued by Remer's "War Directives for the Economic Sectors" on the 12th of Wessel/February, the Home Front was placed under strict regimen not seen since the Hindenburg Program of 1916, with the government transporting millions of workers from the Baltics and Ukraine to work in the German war industry and an exception from conscription being issued to over a million German workers from industries considered vital for the war effort.
Autumn would see an enormous buildup in the German armed forces, expanding from it's previous standing army of roughly 1.9 million (including the Volkssturm) to up to 4 million by the end of that year. The recruitment driven by the patriotic fervor was only reinforced by the arrival of Eastern Germans into the Reich, seeking refuge following the Russian invasion and speaking of brutal attrocities committed by the Russians. Even with the years of propaganda, it was shocking to the German people to hear of the feats of the Russian Imperial Army which spared no person of German language, the fall of Adolfsburg being an example where the Volkssturm prisoners were taken far to the east beyond the Volga, german women would suffer several assaults with over 29 thousand rapes registered within the first four weeks of the invasion. The years of resentment among the slavs led to a widespread terror in the east among settlers, it is estimated that in just the first three months, half a million Germans would be either killed or deported to Siberia to working camps, the spreading of these stories leading to an exodus of over 3 million settlers from Moscowien alone, the majority of it's settler population.
The flight of the Germans from the east also emboldened many Slavs to begin uprisings, the abandonment of farmlands at such a hurried pace gave a power vacuum which was seized by guerrilla groups armed and supplied by the Russian Empire. From Estonia to Odessa, a generalized uprising of several groups would disrupt the German supply lines and even affect countries such as Romania and Finland, both being Pakt members which seized territory from the former Soviet Union in the days of Barbarossa. The paranoia of an uprising of "untermenschen" leading to the loss of the East was played by the government, what was at stake was the very survival of the Reich, the conquests of the previous generation and the legacy of Adolf Hitler, which brought an unprecedented level of engagement especially amongst the youth.
