Unexpectedly, after the telegram was sent, it was like a rock sinking into the sea, without any movement.
Sokov looked at the time and almost ten minutes passed, and he couldn't help but feel anxious. He also called the company commander to come over and asked, "Comrade Commander, why haven't the Front Army Command replied to the telegram yet? Could it be that they have not received our telegram?"
"Comrade Commander," the communications company commander straightened his body and replied in a positive tone: "The other party has received the telegram from us in full."
"But why haven't the call returned for so long?" Ivanov, who was standing next to him, couldn't help but ask.
The communications company commander opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say, so he stood there silently.
"Comrade Deputy Division Commander, this is not the responsibility of the company commander of the communications, it is because we are too anxious." Sokov sighed and said to Cydolin: "The surrender of Paulus to us is of great importance. Even if General Rokosovsky is the commander of the front army, I am afraid that some things cannot be decided without authorization. I guess he should be asking the headquarters of the Supreme Command at this moment. After the reply is made, he will give us an order."
Everyone waited for a quarter of an hour in pain, and the phone ringing on the table rang. Ivanov thought it was called by a leader from the front line, so he walked over and picked up the phone, and said to the microphone: "I am the deputy commander Ivanov, where are you?"
"I am Rokosovsky." Unexpectedly, Rokosovsky's voice came from the receiver: "Is Sokov here?"
"Commander of the Front Army, please wait, I will ask the division commander to answer the phone immediately." After Ivanov finished speaking, he covered the microphone with his hand and shouted to Sokov who was standing next to the reporting phone: "Comrade Commander, the front Army commander will talk to you."
"Hello, Comrade Commander of the Front Army." Sokov walked over and took the microphone, and said in his ear: "Do you have any instructions?"
"Misha, I have reported the content of the telegram you sent to the Supreme Command." Rokosovsky said: "The Supreme Commander is very satisfied with the achievements you have achieved."
When Sokov learned that Stalin was satisfied with the results he had achieved, he couldn't help but feel a little fluttered. However, he tried hard to ask in a steady tone: "Comrade Commander of the Front Army, I wonder if the base camp allows me to accept the surrender of the German army?"
"Go, Misha, this is an opportunity to be recorded in history, don't miss it." After saying this, Rokosovsky said enviously: "To be honest, if my headquarters was not too far from you, I would have wanted to go to the department store in person to accept Paulus' surrender."
After putting down the phone, Sokov said to Ivanov: "Comrade Deputy Division Commander, you can stay here to stay. I was ordered to go to the department store to accept the surrender of the German army."
"Okay." Although Ivanov dreamed of participating in such surrender, it was only a few hundred meters apart. However, due to his responsibilities, he could only choose to stay in the frontier command center. However, he still reminded Sokov: "Comrade Commander, you must pay attention to safety."
"Don't worry, comrade of the deputy division commander." Sokov grinned at Ivanov, "I should be safer than ever at this moment. Not only our soldiers will protect my safety, but even the Germans who are preparing to surrender do not want me to have any accidents. I believe that today's surrender will be very smooth."
"Comrade Colonel." Sokov just walked to the door and walked over from the other side of the traffic trench and shouted to him: "Let me go there together."
Sokov turned his head and saw clearly that the person who spoke was Ublich, the leader of the Anti-Fashi Temple Alliance. Thinking that when he was surrendered later, someone who knew German needed to be a translator next to him. He shook his head at the other party and said, "Let's go, Comrade Ublich, come with us to accept Paulus' surrender."
More than ten minutes later, Sokov and Ubrich walked into the department store with a platoon of soldiers. As soon as they entered the door, Schmidt came up and said flatteringly: "Col. Sokov, our commander is waiting for you in the basement. Please come with me."
When Sokov followed Schmidt to the basement entrance, he found that the two iron doors at the entrance were closed. Sokov frowned slightly and asked back, "Chief of Staff Schmidt, didn't he say he wanted to surrender to us? Why close the door?"
"Col. Sokov, don't get me wrong." Seeing that the door that was still open when he came out was closed, Schmidt was also a little panicked. He quickly explained to Sokov: "It may be caused by some officers and soldiers who do not want to surrender. I will ask them to open the door immediately."
As he said that, Schmidt called a soldier and told him to come forward and call the door. The soldier stepped forward and slapped the iron door through the door with his hands, slapped the door so loudly, but the iron door never opened.
Seeing that the people inside refused to open the door, Sokov turned his head and said to Samoilov after he followed, "Comrade Lieutenant, go and call the door. Remember, let the enemy open the door and surrender in Russian."
Samoilov nodded, stepped to the door a few steps, pounded heavily on the door with his fist, and shouted loudly: "Open the door, I order you to open the door immediately."
When Samoilov knocked on the door, Sokov was thinking in his mind that if the Germans inside refused to open the door, should he order people to use explosives to blow the door open? As for whether the German soldiers who were staying near the door were dead or alive, he would not care about it.
Before Sokov ordered the use of explosives, several gunshots suddenly came from the door. Sokov's ear tips and heard that the guns shooting inside included pistols and submachine guns. Just as Schmidt was about to come forward to ask what was going on inside, the two closed iron doors had been opened from the inside.
The door was opened by several soldiers wearing steel helmets. After they opened the door, they threw the weapons in their hands on the ground and stood on both sides of the door with their hands hanging down. "Please come in, Colonel Sokov." Since the door was opened, Schmidt quickly took a step forward and made a gesture of inviting: "Our Commander is still waiting for you."
When Sokov walked into the iron gate, he saw the body of a German officer lying at the door, holding a pistol. Five or six steps away from him, he was sitting in a soldier without a steel helmet, and his companions were bandaging the wound on his arm. In his mind, Sokov immediately linked the injured soldier with the killed German officer. He guessed that the soldier might have wanted to open the iron gate, but was stopped by his commander, and the two sides fought. The officer shot and shot his arm, while the submachine gun in his hand killed the officer who stopped him from opening the door.
After thinking through the causes and consequences, Sokov stopped and turned to Samoilov and said, "Comrade Lieutenant, please bandage the wounded soldier. Also, give him some more food."
"Comrade Commander, why is this?" Samoilov didn't understand why Sokov suddenly issued such a strange order. He asked back: "Why should I treat this wounded soldier and give him food?"
"It's very simple, lieutenant." Sokov looked at the wounded soldier sitting on the ground and said, "If it weren't for him, we might have been locked out of the door at this moment. It was because he shot and killed the officer who tried to stop the door from opening that we could enter the basement smoothly. Do you understand?"
"I understand, comrade Commander." Samoilov said, taking out a first aid kit from his pocket, bent down and handed it to the wounded soldier who was injured in his arm. Seeing that the wounded soldier had received the first aid kit, he took out a piece of black bread as big as a fist from his pocket and stuffed it to the wounded soldier. Unexpectedly, the Soviet army who came in gave him food even after giving him the first aid kit, and was so excited that Practice thanked Sokov.
When Sokov came to persuade the surrender last time, the basement could be ventilated and there was no odor. But after only a few days, the basement was stinking, and the smell of blood and the smell of shoes and socks mixed in the dirty air, like a huge garbage dump.
Schmidt took Sokov and walked along the corridor full of officers and soldiers to the door of a room, stopped and said to Sokov: "Col. Sokov, Your Excellency Commander is waiting for you in the room."
Sokov nodded, reached forward and pushed open the door, and walked in with great strides. Ubrich and Samoilov behind him also hurriedly followed him in.
When he came to the house, with the help of the dim light, Sokov saw a soldier wearing an officer's military coat and an otter-skin cap standing by the wall with his back facing the door, looking up at the map hanging on the wall.
"Master Paulus," Sokov knew that this man was Paulus, and stepped behind him and said righteously: "I am Sokov, the colonel of the Soviet Red Army, and was ordered to come and accept the surrender of the German army and capture you all."
Paulus, facing the wall, turned slowly after listening to Ubrich's translation. Sokov saw clearly that he was wearing the general's uniform. It seemed that Hitler had no time to let the air force drop the marshal's uniform. Paulus took off the otter-skinned hat on his head, put on a big-brimmed hat, raised his hand to salute Sokov, and said loudly: "German Marshal Paulus surrendered to the Soviet Red Army!"
"Samoilov," Sokov took the pistol handed over by Paulus, turned around and handed it to Samoilov who was following him, and ordered him to say, "Order all the soldiers outside to come in and take all the German officers and soldiers in the basement out."
After Samoilov left, Sokov pointed at the chair next to the conference table and said politely: "Master Paulus, it will definitely take a long time to accommodate so many troops. We might as well sit down and chat."
"Mr. Marshal." After Paulus sat down, Sokov sat down in a chair not far away, looked at him and asked, "I want to ask you, there are obviously many opportunities to break through, why don't you organize troops to break through?"
"We lack fuel, ammunition and food." Paulus replied with a wry smile when he heard this question: "If you want to break through, you can only throw away all your technical equipment and run away with light equipment. But in such a cold climate, even if our troops break through your siege, they will be wiped out by you in the snow and ice."
Sokov did not object to Paulus's statement, but nodded instead. He also felt that the enemy who had lost his heavy weapons would escape in a hurry once he had left the position he relied on and fled in a hurry in the snow, and would soon be defeated by the Soviet army that was chasing him.
Seeing that Sokov agreed with his statement, Paulus continued: "In the process of retreating, the troops are easily damaged by you, and even annihilation is one aspect. More importantly, I have sent telegrams to the head of state many times, asking him to let the troops break through, but he refused without hesitation."
"Master Paulus," Sokov, after Paulus finished speaking, he was silent for a while and said, "If I were you, I would definitely not take into account Hitler's orders and decisively ordered the troops to break through. Don't forget that as early as December 1941, General Guderian blatantly violated Hitler's orders in order to prevent his troops from being annihilated by us, and led the troops behind him. Thus, he preserved a large amount of live forces, which forced the counterattack launched by our army to end early."
"Col. Sokov, haven't you heard what I just said?" Paulus defended in discontent: "If we want to break through, we must discard all our technical equipment and escape from the encirclement on foot..."
"Master Paulus, I understand every word you just said." Sokov sneered and said, "If I were you, I would lead the troops to break through as soon as possible and join with Manstein's troops who came to meet. Then the two troops joined forces to defend the Soviet attack on the vast front, and then dispatched troops to attack the Soviet flanks like the Battle of Kharkov. You should know that the more than 200,000 troops of the Sixth Army would form a terrifying combat power after joining Manstein's army. Once the counterattacks of the Soviet army were annihilated through the flank counterattack, the German army would now achieve a decisive victory on the Soviet battlefield."
Paulus listened to Ubrich's translation in a daze. After being silent for a long time, he spoke, "Col. Sokov, maybe you are right. At that time, Manstein's troops were only a few dozen kilometers away from us. As long as I dispatch even a division to attack each other, I might have broken your encirclement long ago. As long as the forces of both sides merge, they can form an advantage in the local area.
Colonel Sokov, I would like to say something I am not afraid of getting angry. From the attack on Stalingrad to the present, the only person my subordinates are convinced is you. No matter who receives the task of attacking Mamayevgang, they will look sad, because they all know in their hearts that it is almost impossible to conquer Mamayevgang."
"Thank you, Marshal Paulus." Sokov was still a little proud when he heard Paulus' appreciation for himself. He could get praise from the enemy. This is the greatest honor of a soldier: "Actually, I have long judged that after you won the Kharkov region, your next target is Stalingrad, so I built a complete underground fortification in Mamayev hill."
Chapter completed!