The Rise of the Third Reich

Captain Rudolf von Ribbentrop walked towards a Russian girl on the side of the road who had short hair, thin clothes, looked a bit strong, and had a decent face. He found that the girl was trembling slightly. He didn't know whether it was because she was cold because she wore too few clothes, or because she was hungry because she hadn't eaten for many days. In short, Captain Ribbentrop felt pity.

"Girl," Ribbentrop said to the girl in stiff Russian with a smile, "this is for you."

Then he handed over a 100-gram box of Scarlett energy chocolates.

Zoya found that there was a box of something that looked like candy in her outstretched right hand, and she was immediately stunned - what is going on? Why does the enemy want to give him food? Do you want to bribe yourself? Or do you want to have fun with yourself? Although this guy is reactionary, he still looks...

"Girl, don't be afraid," Ribbentrop noticed at this time that the girl in front of him seemed a little scared. He said with a smile, "It will get better. When the Bolsheviks are defeated, life will get better."

"Thank you... thank you..." Zoya had already realized at this time that the box of candy was the fruit of her own begging work. Although she didn't understand what Ribbentrop meant by speaking a lot of "Russian with a German accent", she still said "thank you", still in German.

"You speak German?" Ribbentrop also switched to German. "That's great."

"I know a little bit, it's taught in school." Zoya said.

"You speak really well and your pronunciation is very accurate." Ribbentrop said in slow German, "You must have good grades in school, right? Judging from your age, you must be a college student, right?"

"I...I'm not," Zoya shook her head. "I didn't pass the exam."

They should not be allowed to pass the exam!

"Then you can try again." Ribbentrop said, "Pskov State Pedagogical University and Petrograd Royal State University are recruiting students now. As long as you can pass the exam, your food and accommodation will be guaranteed. And you don’t have to pay tuition, so you might as well give it a try.”

Pskov State Pedagogical University is a local university in Pskov Oblast, founded in 1874. Petrograd Royal State University is the oldest university in Russian history and one of the best universities in the world. The university was founded in 1724 by order of Peter the Great. But the current name of this university should be State Leningrad University - this is Zoya's dream institution of higher learning!

But Ribbentrop's words sounded like a bolt from the blue to Zoya.

"Petrograd Royal State University? Could it be that Leningrad has become Petrograd?" Zoya looked at the handsome German guy in front of her nervously.

Petrograd Royal State University or Leningrad State University is located in the center of Petrograd, across the Neva River from the Winter Palace.

If this school is now transformed into the Royal State University of Petrograd, wouldn’t it be... wouldn’t it be true that glorious Leningrad has become Her Majesty’s loyal Petrograd?

Zoya suddenly became confused. Leningrad has become Petrograd, and the Romanov dynasty is really about to be restored!

"Not yet," Ribbentrop said with a shrug, "but it will be soon. Leningrad has been besieged for nearly a year, food reserves are close to depletion, and peaceful residents have recently begun to be expelled in large numbers. Many Petrograd The teachers and family members of the Royal State University were also driven out, and Her Majesty the Queen took them in Tsarskoe Selo and used the Ekaterina Palace as the temporary site of the Royal State University in Petrograd.”

Zoya didn't fully understand what he said, but she still understood the general idea - Leningrad seemed to be about to fall, and the reactionary queen had even begun to prepare to educate the anti-G-revolutionary successors!

What to do!

Just when Captain Rudolf von Ribbentrop was talking about a "traffic jam", he struck up a conversation with the Russian girl Zoya. On another road leading from Velikiy Luki to Smolensk, Brandt, a sniper of the 3rd Armored Division of the German Wehrmacht, was riding a half-track armored vehicle - yes, the anti-war socialist who lurked into the Nazi camp. Brandt, who won the Iron Cross for his outstanding performance in the Battle of Warsaw, also entered the Wehrmacht sniper school in Zosen, where he received sniper training.

After graduating from the Wehrmacht sniper school in Zossen, he did not return to his original unit. Instead, he was sent to the 3rd Armored Division, a well-known elite force in the Wehrmacht. The 9th Armored Grenadier was affiliated with the 3rd Armored Grenadier Regiment. The sniper squad of the company's fire support platoon.

There are a total of 4 snipers (and 4 assistants) in the sniper squad he is in, one for him, one for the squad leader, Sergeant Schmidt, and a corporal named Hans Told. The last one is Joseph Meyer, a superior soldier of Jewish descent from the Baltic States.

Four people were now sitting in a half-track vehicle, wandering along the road toward the place where the intensive gunfire came from.

There were also many begging Russians on both sides of the road, most of them women, but also some elderly people, all in ragged clothes, standing numbly on the roadside, looking longingly at the endless convoy of the 3rd Armored Division.

"How could this be? If the Land Reform Edict had not been promulgated, why are there still beggars everywhere?" Brandt looked at the Russians on the roadside with sympathy and said with some emotion.

"Normal." Joseph Meyer said.

He was holding an FG42 paratrooper rifle wrapped in a cover (snipers can choose between FG42 and Mauser 98K as their own weapons), and his eyes were just staring at the girl on the roadside.

The other two snipers and four sniper assistants on the half-track were all dozing off, and no one paid attention to the conversation between Brandt and Meyer.

"How can it be normal?" Brandt said with a frown. "We have allocated land and exempted from agricultural taxes for three years. How can we still have no bread to eat?"

"How can it be so easy to farm?" Meyer's family is a rich farmer from the Baltic state, and he is an expert in running a farm. "Farming not only requires land, but also labor, farm tools, livestock, seeds, irrigation facilities, and good The weather and a good business mind, of course, also require a stable environment.

And what do the Russians have now? Except for the land, there is nothing else. Herbert (Brandt), how many strong laborers did you see along the way? There seems to be no one. There are also horses. Have you ever seen any Russian people holding horses? Not either? "

While the Queen promulgated the "Agrarian Reform Edict", she was also desperately expanding her White Army! Pskov Oblast is the only relatively solid base of the Belarusian government, so almost all the male laborers here have been recruited (not all by the White Army, the Red Army has also recruited many before).

As for horses...the collective farms didn't have many horses to begin with, and they were all taken away when the Red Army retreated. There were some tractors left, but now these tractors are scrap metal. On the one hand, there is no way to distribute tractors to farmers (and individual farmers cannot afford them), and on the other hand, there is no oil for tractors.

Moreover, during the autumn harvest last year, the southern region of Pskov Oblast was not completely occupied by the German and White Russian troops. Many collective farms did not organize the autumn harvest, allowing a large number of crops to rot in the ground, thus causing this year's spring famine.

The same situation also exists in Western Belarus and Right Bank Ukraine! Agricultural production, which was destroyed by brutal wars and social changes (regressing from public ownership back to private ownership), could not be restored in the short term. Most of the land allocated to private individuals has been abandoned, and the people who remain there basically rely on wheat imported by the European Community from South America and Egypt. Because the Russian Empire is not a member of the European Community, it cannot receive relief for the time being, which is why there are so many beggars.

However, the Russian Empress Olga herself did not care how many subjects were begging for food. Anyway, she had exempted all the taxes she could. The people below should figure out how to survive on their own - it is said that no one has ever starved to death in Russia!

On April 30, the German army began artillery bombardment and air raids. The empress, who desperately wanted to return to Petrograd, wrote letters in the Alexander Palace on the outskirts of Petrograd (Leningrad) - she wrote many letters, some to several Red Army generals in Petrograd. They were given official titles and made wishes; some were written to the generals of the German Army Group North, praising their bravery and contribution to the revival of the Russian Empire, and promising to grant them Russian noble titles after conquering Petrograd; some were written to Several of the most influential entrepreneurs in Germany invited them to participate in the development of Russian oil resources; there were also two letters written to Hessmann and Chloe, among which the letter to Hessmann was very condescending. And it is very ambiguous, and the letter to Chloe proposed that Prince Yusupov and Princess Irina’s only daughter Elizabeth be married to Hessmann’s son Rudolf...

As it approached 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the Queen's letter was almost completed. At this time, her Guards Commander Prince Yusupov quickly walked into her office, holding in his hand the telegram he had just received - a war briefing from the General Staff of the German Wehrmacht.

"Your Majesty, good news! The German 3rd Panzergrenadier Division and the 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division have just broken through the Velikaya River and the Pripyat River (a tributary of the Dnieper River, the famous The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is located on this river).”

"Breakthrough of the Pripyat River?" Olga knew that the German army would attack the Velikaya River from Veliky Luki south, but she did not know that they would break through the Pripyat River. "Where? Belarus or Ukraine?"

"Near Kiev in Ukraine." Prince Yusupov said, "Then the German army will break through to the east bank of the Dnieper River and then go north to Smolensk, so that the Red Army in the Belarusian salient will be surrounded."