So, there are counter tank fights near Kiev, sometimes successful, more often – no, massive frontal offensives on the positions of German anti-tank guns, maneuvering without communications and normal maps, separation from supply and repair lines. The result: by 30 June the Red Army loses 2,600 tanks, the Wehrmacht – 180 (irretrievably). The entire South-Western Front is crashing down.
Stalin realizes the reality of such a picture: he is confronted with a group of German generals, with Hitler, compelled to answer their questions, unimaginably small and pitiful. This Dzhugashvili does not like, and he, even if not immediately, begins to make more or less correct decisions. The principle of eliminating problems, before – to see only the good, to discard all that is not part of smart plans. If someone talks about dying of hunger – they should be made to confess to espionage to Britain, and the question is solved. Twenty years after the Revolution, the people live worse than in 1914 – let’s say that this is not true, and the end is the matter. In Moscow (supply in a special category), after the cards have been canceled, thousands of queues are snapping around the stores – comrades from the NKGB warn the townsfolk without proper registration, that their next visit to the capital will be punished by article for speculation – and the crowds quickly disappear. Why bother with the actual development of the production of this boring consumer goods? The Scout believes that the Finns will not take the bread and salt of the Red Army – he should be summoned to Moscow and eliminated. It is the same with reports of the situation with the preparation of troops, or Hitler’s plans for an invasion. Those who express unpleasant, should be removed – and everything becomes pleasantly quiet.
But, this time, if we do not see the armored columns of the Wehrmacht, they do not cease to exist, and the mental image: Stalin before the smiling German military is becoming more real.
The first orders are to «shoot». It does not get better from that. Earlier, it was possible to establish ubiquitous deathly silence. Now the clanking of the caterpillars of German tanks is becoming more and more distinct. The commanders are getting cold hands, blood is pouring from the brain, resentment is rising in the chest – nothing more.