Struggle in Soviet Russia

University of Albertina, the original main teaching building.

As the 3rd Belorussian Front Command said, the entire university campus has been basically destroyed, but it was not destroyed by Soviet artillery fire, but flattened by the bombing of the British. It is unbelievable that despite the ruins all around, the three-story main teaching building is intact, but the glass on the windows has been shattered.

After rush repairs by engineers, the entire building has now resumed operation, and the two generators that power it have begun to operate normally.

At night, the entire Konigsberg fell into a deadly darkness. The war caused the entire city's power supply system and water supply system to be paralyzed. The places where the light can be seen are the Soviet garrison camp and the main teaching building of the University of Albertina.

In the room on the third floor of the main building near the easternmost side, Viktor was sitting in front of the lamp and flipping through a document. His thoughts were interrupted from time to time by the sound of gunshots coming from outside. Of course, it wasn't that there was still a war somewhere. , was just a way for Soviet soldiers in the city to celebrate their victory.

Up to now, the battle in East Prussia has not completely ended. The Soviet army is still fighting against the German troops trapped in the peninsula of Zemland. Therefore, looking from the window to the northwest at this moment, you can see that the sky in the northwest is dark red. Yes, that is a unique sight caused by the war.

Since the official launch of the Winter Offensive last year, a big change in the way the Soviets fought is that the number of night battles has increased significantly. Performance.

"Buzzing..."

Suddenly, the lamp on the table began to tremble slightly, along with the half glass of water that had been placed on the table before. At the same time, the glass window behind him kept beeping, and it was like an earthquake. generally.

Sitting at the desk, Victor frowned, got up from the chair, picked up a pack of cigarettes on the table, and walked towards the window behind him.

Looking from the direction of the window to the northwest, it is not surprising that the sky was only dark red before, but now it has become shiny. At the junction of heaven and earth, it seems that there is thunder and lightning raging, bright yellow electric light strobes However, it was the scene caused by the artillery shelling. If nothing else, the Soviet army should have launched a large-scale shelling on the German army who were recalcitrant in the Pillau area.

Except for the northwest direction, everything that can be seen is darkness, and in this darkness, I don't know how many people are struggling on the verge of death.

At present, the Germans in Königsberg are still fleeing westward. There is only one way they can leave Königsberg, and that is to escape through the Frisch Bay to the Frisch Spit, and from there take a boat to Gdonia And Danzig, these two places are still in the hands of the German army, and the German navy has a large number of ships waiting there, ready to transfer German refugees to the German mainland.

The Soviet army has left a passage for these German refugees to retreat. From Konigsberg to Frisch Bay, there is a narrow passage that remains connected, but if nothing else happens, this passage will take two more days. will also be truncated.

In the document that Victor had just read, investigators detailed the current state of the port of Pilau, a stronghold where the Germans are currently organizing refugee evacuation.

The German army in this port has already evacuated, but the Soviet army has not yet invaded. The entire port has accumulated more than 100,000 refugees. They are trying every means to leave East Prussia and withdraw to Germany.

The evacuation there was unorganized, and all evacuation operations were organized spontaneously. Those large and small ships not only lacked the strength of defense, but also had no organizational order.

Most of the ships responsible for the evacuation were coal ships, and the owners of the ships were daring and desperate for money. The reason why they insisted on evacuating refugees in Pillau was not out of a sense of national responsibility, but simply out of a national disaster. fiscal. Refugees often need to pay all their personal property in order to get a ticket.

Just yesterday, a Soviet fighter jet dropped a bomb on the pier of the port of Pillau, which happened to detonate a German arsenal outside the port. The resulting explosion will crowd thousands of refugees near the pier. Involved in the fire, causing numerous casualties.

In Victor's view, the hundreds of thousands of refugees in East Prussia at this time were a disaster in themselves. The Soviet army, which was still actively advancing towards Berlin, had no time to stop and arrange these refugees. At the same time, the military management in various places The committee also couldn't come up with so many supplies to fill the belly of these refugees.

Therefore, in the process of advancing, the Soviet army would turn a blind eye to the refugees fleeing westward. Fundamentally speaking, it would be more beneficial for the alliance to let these refugees escape into the German-controlled area.

Take Königsberg as an example. Before Victor left Moscow to take office, Comrade Malenkov had already said that he could not get more support in Königsberg. The so-called support here includes food. For all kinds of materials, he had to rely on the few materials that the Military Management Committee had to survive the next two months.

To be honest, from the point of view of compassion, Victor would have preferred that the refugees stranded in Konigsberg could become the labor force captured by the NKVD. During the transfer, they can get a bite to eat. As for those who stayed in Konigsberg and could not go anywhere, the chances of them being able to survive were not high, because the Military Management Council did not have much food to provide them.

"Boom boom boom..."

A dull knock sounded behind him.

Victor's thoughts were pulled back from the darkness outside the window. He turned around, glanced in the direction of the door first, then lowered his head and took out a cigarette from the cigarette case, and then said, "Come in."

The door was pushed open from the outside, and a young national security second lieutenant walked in. He first gave Victor a military salute, and then said, "Comrade Chairman, Comrade Captain Chabradze of Lerkovo has arrived."

Victor put the cigarette in his mouth, lit it with a lighter, took a breath, and said, "Please come in."

"Yes, Comrade Chairman," the second lieutenant gave another military salute and turned to leave.

After a while, a middle-aged man who looked rather thin walked into the door. He was wearing casual clothes, and his thin face was wrinkled. He didn't look like a member of the People's Commissariat of State Security. The captain, on the contrary, looks like an old country farmer.

"Sit down, Comrade Jabba," Victor pointed towards the sofa when he saw the middle-aged man walk in, and said with a smile, "Just arrived from Lerkovo?"

"Yes, Comrade Chairman," the middle-aged man nodded. "According to your instructions, we have found Hildebrand Gullit."

The middle-aged man said, and walked to the side of the sofa, he did not sit directly, but said: "When we found this guy, he was about to leave Leerkovo and flee to Munich, but from his We didn't find anything of value in the salute we carried."

Victor smiled, walked over from the window, and sat down in front of the sofa opposite the middle-aged man. He took a breath, motioned for the other party to take a seat again, and then said, "Introduce him."

The middle-aged man nodded, bent down and sat down on the sofa, then took out a small notebook from his pocket, flipped to a page, looked at it, and said, "As mentioned in the previous order, this Greek Debrand Gullit has indeed been serving the SS in the past, specializing in the sale of art and raising money for the SS by selling that art."

Having said that, he handed over the small book in his hand.

Victor took the small notebook and looked at the contents recorded in it.

The middle-aged man named Jabba Chabradze, a Georgian national security captain, has been lurking in the East Prussia region for the past few years and is one of the heads of the local intelligence network of the People's Commissariat of State Security.

Prior to this, to be precise, after the Yalta Conference, Victor, in the name of the Presidium of the People's Commissariat for National Security, issued new orders to various intelligence stations in Eastern Europe and Germany, requiring them to pay close attention to some specific Intelligence information for museums and collectors.

In East Prussia, Chabradze was tasked with monitoring what he said was Hildebrand Gullit, who was not only an art collector, but also an art collector for the past few years. An art seller dedicated to the SS in China.

As early as 1938, the Nazi government in Germany formulated a law specially used to loot works of art and cultural relics, declaring that the government has the right to confiscate those so-called "degenerate" works of art. , including paintings, statues and other works of art of a series of schools such as Impressionism and Modernism.

Of course, later with the outbreak of war, especially when the Nazis began to persecute Jews on a large scale, those jewelry, artworks, and cultural relics collected by Jews also became items that the government has the right to confiscate.

Hildebrand Gullit himself had Jewish blood, but he never showed mercy to his Jewish compatriots in the process of serving the SS. I don't know how many works of art have been looted by the hand. Because of this, this person is quite famous in the world's art market.

And this is also the most direct reason Victor is eyeing this person.