Imperial Elite

Chapter 159 Battle of Warsaw
Normally, minor incidents like attacks on troops stationed in Paris wouldn't attract the attention of the Supreme Command.

After all, the Eastern Front is in complete chaos right now. Old Joe is already planning to attack Warsaw, and the Russian military government in the Caucasus is planning a large-scale attack. The loss of a mere company is really insignificant.

However, this incident was really too exaggerated. All the surviving soldiers, as well as many Parisian citizens, claimed that they saw skeletons dressed in black robes attacking the Teutonic troops in the streets.

And the leader even killed two of them with his longsword.

Even the forensic report afterward proved that several of the Teutonic soldiers who were attacked did indeed die from being hacked by melee weapons.

In addition, the Teutonic army's high command at this time had all been to Paris to some extent, had experienced that hell of blood and fire, and had heard rumors about the underworld of Paris.

Even if they haven't seen Joe's "Hell's Gate: Paris" for some reason, they all know that there must be something beneath Paris.

So when he received the report, he was already extremely busy preparing for the upcoming Battle of Warsaw.

The Supreme Command still made a decision: regardless of whether there were any strange things in the Paris underground, they had to respond to this.

Whether something has crawled out from underground in Paris or the resistance is dressed in such a frightening way, they have to strike, and strike hard!

However, given the current tensions on the Eastern Front, it's unrealistic to let the Wehrmacht handle this matter. Since the Guards have suffered the most casualties, it's better to let the Armed Guards deal with it. After all, it's their people who are involved in the incidents, and the Guards will be needed to govern Paris after the war. They're professionals at this.

Holtz was very dissatisfied with the National Defense Force's attempt to shift the blame, after all, he had failed to catch up with Old Joe and let him get away.

Old Joe has now appeared on the battlefield. If possible, Holtz, as the leader of the guard, would like to lead the armed guard to fight Old Joe for three hundred rounds, so that Old Joe will know that he only earned the title of the most dangerous man in the Old World by relying on tanks.

If we're talking about the most dangerous people in the Old World, it has to be us Teutons!
However, even the Teutonic Grand Master knew about this matter at this time, and since the Grand Master had also been disgusted by that movie back then, he ordered the Paris authorities to clean up the catacombs after Gaul surrendered.

Now that this has happened, His Excellency the President feels it is a challenge to his authority, so he must take strong action.

No matter what crawls out of the ground, we must send tanks to send them into the air!
Since the president has made this decision, Holtz has no choice but to personally lead his men to Paris.

However, at this time, most of the armed guards had been transferred to Poland, preparing to clash with the People's Revolutionary Union and Old Joe.

Therefore, Holtz can only mobilize the Germania Division, which was just formed and is mostly composed of foreign volunteers.

Originally, according to the plan, this division was supposed to be sent to the Eastern Front after it was formed.

After all, there were quite a few dissidents among the volunteers in this division who were dissatisfied with NATO and the People's Revolutionary Alliance.

But now, isn't this just the right time? Holtz thinks that before this unit goes to the Eastern Front, it can go to Paris to gain more combat experience.

After all, whether it's guerrillas or something that crawled out from underground, how much trouble could they possibly cause compared to the 88mm cannon?
In fact, Holtz, as the national leader of the Guard, had some premonitions about the guys causing trouble in Paris.

That means it wasn't just anyone, but Old Joe's son, who had been fighting as a guerrilla in the woods, who broke through the encirclement and fled to Paris.

After all, the guards who had been clearing out the guerrillas in the forest had not clashed with the guerrillas for some time.

Then this happened in Paris, it seems like too much of a coincidence.
Moreover, the guerrillas of Old Joe's son like to wear green cloaks in the woods, which matches the black cloaks worn by the people in Paris.

Without a doubt, this must be Old Qiao's son.

If you can't beat Old Qiao yourself, beating up Little Qiao shouldn't be a problem, right?

At this moment, Andrei was unaware that the National Commander-in-Chief of the Guard, along with a division of armed guards and many more ordinary guards, was preparing to come and kowtow to them.

At this time, Andrei was in the most comfortable period of his military career.

At night, you can sleep in a house with windows and a roof, eat decent food, and even have information delivered to your door without you having to ask for it yourself.

For many Gauls, it would be quite difficult to take up arms and actively fight the Teutons, but if you could get them to look at you with amusement and say something, they would not only have the guts to do so, but they would also be very bold in doing so.

Now, Andrei knows not only the daily patrol routes of the Teutonic occupying forces, but also exactly what they eat every day.

At the same time, as Paris is the capital and a cultural center, there is something that ordinary people may not expect: Paris has a lot of universities, and naturally, there are a lot of university students.

Many of these young university students were dissatisfied with the surrender and the Teutonic occupation.

So this time, Andrei didn't need to go to the bar for drinks. Andrei led the partisans to do a few small things in Paris, such as ambushing Teutonic patrols a few times, and then casually raiding General Schaumburg's headquarters, which was actually the headquarters of the Teutonic general who controlled Paris.

However, the only drawback was that due to a slight error in intelligence, the Teutonic general in charge of Paris was not in his command post when Andrei launched the attack.

So Andrei could only dump the few unlucky officers at the entrance of the Teutonic-occupied Mosley Hotel.

In short, after establishing his own brand, André quickly became the most prominent resistance force in the entire Greater Paris region, attracting countless heroes to join him.

Even London is now having a headache; if things continue like this, it's feared that another Joe might emerge.

However, since the Teutons are still very assertive, even though Andrei is currently adopting a dismissive attitude towards London and refusing to obey orders, London still sent agents from its overseas intelligence service to contact Andrei and prepare to support him so that he could produce a few more big ones.

After all, since Joe resigned from his citizenship, although Bonitania has partially joined NATO and the current government's key members have a good relationship with Joe, and even the Minister of Munitions is Joe's younger brother.

Furthermore, the reorganized army, in order to strengthen its firepower, directly procured submachine guns that Wagner had previously used.

However, they still feel somewhat embarrassed to praise Old Joe's record on the Eastern Front now.

But Andrei was different. As Old Joe's son, he joined the Buntanian army and continued to raise partisans to fight the Teutons after the army was scattered. This was politically correct to the extreme.

And even if Old Joe came, he wouldn't be able to find anything wrong with it. We're praising your kid, you don't have any objections, right?

At this time, Old Joe was busy preparing for the Battle of Warsaw and had no time to listen to the news, so he had no objections for the time being. However, Andrei, who was being touted as a representative of the resistance, not only had objections, but his objections were quite strong.

After all, the key to guerrilla warfare is to sneak into a village quietly, without firing a shot; the more discreet you are, the better.

Unlike his father back then, he no longer had several armored regiments under his command, able to defeat whomever he wanted without giving anyone a chance to argue.

So even though he was in the most comfortable period of his military career, when he heard the London radio broadcast praising him, Andrei immediately felt that something was wrong. London wanted to boost morale, but he also wanted to save his own life.

Today the name is broadcast over the loudspeaker, tomorrow the Japanese will raid the house.

Although Paris is nice, it's not suitable for someone like me who's better off.

So Andrei thought to himself, for guerrilla warfare to succeed, he first had to be able to swim before he could fight.

I can't stay in Paris forever; I have to get moving.

However, before leaving Paris, I still have a big project to complete.

So what kind of work in London right now would be considered a big job?
After thinking for a moment, Andri decided that he should go and confront the Gestapo. They had already occupied an entire building. As an intelligence agency, they were so arrogant that he couldn't just sit back and not give them a good beating.

Just as Andrei was preparing to pull off a major operation, Old Joe, who had been traveling north along the Vistula River, had already led his troops to the outskirts of Warsaw.

At this time, the Polish-German campaign was almost in its final stage, and the Steppe Front of the People's Revolutionary Union was making great progress on the southern front.

After losing Krakow, the Polish Germans also lost Katowice and are now advancing towards Wrocław.

Meanwhile, the Upper Silesia Front in the north had stabilized the defenses of Danzig.

If Warsaw can be captured, the entire East Poland will become a buffer zone between the People's Revolutionary League and the Teutonic Knights, and Bohemia will be able to escape its isolated state through land connections with East Poland.

In order to capture Warsaw, not only has the main force of the People's Revolutionary League, the Western Front, approached Warsaw, but the Free Gauls' forces have also reached the north of Warsaw.

Strategically, Warsaw was now surrounded on three sides.

However, it is not so easy to simply capture Warsaw.

Judging from the chaotic radio calls within Warsaw at this time, the Teutons had sent a large number of troops into Warsaw via the railway and the Vistula River.

Meanwhile, with the Teutons abandoning the air battles in Bunitania, the air pressure on the Eastern Front increased dramatically.

A direct attack on Warsaw would obviously lead to a protracted war of attrition.

So after meeting with his former student Constantine in Galvorin, not far from Warsaw, Joe and Constantine quickly reached an agreement on how to seize Warsaw.

The honor of capturing Warsaw will belong to Constantine, and the Western Front of the People's Revolutionary Union will take on this tough nut.

Meanwhile, Old Joe's NATO forces were tasked with covering the flanks of the Western Front and cutting off reinforcements for the defenders in Warsaw.

In short, Old Joe had to sever the land connection between Warsaw and Łódź, a city to the west of Warsaw, and cut off shipping on the Vytsva River.

This problem sounds complicated and is actually not simple at all, but compared to the Teutons and the Polish Germans wrestling in Warsaw, cutting off the supply lines and delaying reinforcements is obviously much easier.

Old Qiao still felt a little resentful about his former students taking on tough challenges while he played a support role.

After all, back then, I could take on their entire company with just one vehicle. How come decades later, I've ended up as a support player?
However, emotions aside, the reality is that Constantine, with his three army groups, is capable of launching major offensives.

So after determining the division of labor, Joe began to organize his troops to cut off the connection between Warsaw and Roots.

Erich, who was in Warsaw, had by this time completed his preparations for the battle.

As someone who was repeatedly outmaneuvered by Old Joe in the last great war, the general who, in this great war, used a single fast-attack to completely encircle the entire Gallic mobile forces and the Bonitania expeditionary force... or rather, someone who will soon be promoted to marshal.

Erich had already confirmed that the theories he had grasped during the interwar period were correct.

That means static defense is completely outdated. As long as the attacking side has an advantage in mobility, even if the forces of both sides are similar, they can quickly concentrate their troops to form an advantage in a local area, then break through the opponent's defense line, and then begin to penetrate deeper into the enemy's territory.

This forces the enemy to mobilize other troops to fill the gap in the area they occupy, further weakening the already thinned defenses, and ultimately leading to their encirclement and annihilation in mobile warfare.

Therefore, in Erich's view, the key to holding Warsaw was not urban street fighting, but a preemptive strike before the People's Revolutionary Union's forces could launch their attack.

Although the People's Revolutionary Union's troops came with great force and the Polish-Germans did not perform well, the Polish-Germans had still depleted much of their offensive momentum in the previous two weeks.

Although his own troops were slightly fewer in number, they had just undergone rest and were in better condition than the People's Revolutionary Alliance in terms of both personnel and equipment.

Meanwhile, many air force wings have also completed their relocation. According to the intelligence provided by Abbotwell, this battle is between 500,000 and 400,000, and the advantage is on our side!

We must deliver a crushing blow to the Revolutionary Alliance in Warsaw!
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Prior to 1943, the large-scale armored battles between the Teutons and the People's Revolutionary Union during the Warsaw Pilgrimage were the largest and most brutal battles of the war.

Almost all of the armored and air force aces on both sides had participated in this battle.

Even after the war, few people were willing to mention this battle in their memoirs.

—From *A History of Twentieth-Century Warfare*

(End of this chapter)