Chapter 206: Let Pooch Be Dominated By Fear Once More
While Model on the Southern Front and Dieter led thousands of “mercenaries” and 20,000 Greek troops in bitterly holding on and delaying time.
On the Northern Front near the Strandzha Mountains at the Bulgaria-Ottoman border, Brigadier General Lelouch Lithel von Hunt had already secretly maneuvered his armored division, as well as several corps that had followed him one after another to reinforce the Southern Front, into position.
And hidden them in the Strandzha Mountains forest near Bulgaria’s important port city Burgas.
The Bulgaria-Ottoman border, its western third is plain terrain, that is, the triangular area at the Bulgaria-Ottoman-Greece tripoint. While the eastern two-thirds of the Bulgaria-Ottoman border is entirely covered by the Strandzha Mountains, extending all the way to the Black Sea coast.
The Strandzha Mountains are not particularly high or steep, but they cover a large area. The northernmost point reaches Bulgaria’s important seaport Burgas, and the southern point reaches Ottoman Kirklareli. East-west length 130 kilometers, north-south width 80 kilometers.
The Strandzha Mountains are mainly erosion terrain; over millions of years, Black Sea winds and rainwater from rivers flowing into the Black Sea have eroded the mountains into relatively low and flat shapes, with large expanses of granite and schist exposed. Where there are no rocks exposed, it is mostly covered with dense primitive forest.
Only a few small mountain paths pass through the dense forests, connecting Burgas Port and Kirklareli, etc.—and these mountain paths are quite famous, called “Via Pontica” in Latin, half-transliterated as “Pontus Highway” or “Bontu Ancient Road”.
Players who have played games like “Rome: Total War” should be familiar with it. In ancient Roman times, there was a “Pontus” or “Kingdom of Pontus”（Pontus） in the north of the Anatolian Peninsula, which was later conquered by Caesar’s rival Pompey and became a province of the Roman Empire.
“Bontu Ancient Road”, as the name implies, is the ancient trade route from the Thrace Region to the Pontus region in antiquity.
Today, with Lelouch bringing his large army to this area and personally observing the surrounding terrain, he decided to use the Strandzha’s not-so-steep erosion hilly terrain, combined with the local dense forests and the barely passable Bontu Ancient Road through the forest area, to do something big.
“The terrain here is quite similar to Luxembourg and the Sedan area on the Western Front. The mountains are not hard to traverse, merely at the level of erosion hills. But the forests are particularly dense, very suitable for hiding troops and conducting concealed marches, and there are a few trade ancient roads to ensure crossing the hilly forest area…”
After personally surveying the terrain, Lelouch couldn’t help but think of Manstein’s Yellow Plan from Earth.
As well as, during the later Battle of the Bulge, a certain commander’s plan to send tanks through the Ardennes Region straight to Antwerp Port.
At that time and place, just like this moment, they were so similar.
With the idea in mind, he began to formulate in detail an operational plan to break through the Strandzha Mountains, cut straight to the Sea of Marmara coast, and completely sever all the British Army besieging the Istanbul area（Note: See diagram below）
As Army Group Chief of Staff, Lelouch naturally could not handle everything personally.
He himself only handled the big picture and main strategy, while many details needed to be secretly completed by the ordinary staff officers below who were not chiefs of staff.
Everyone had worked hard in the previous few days and produced a detailed plan that was in principle similar to the later Western Front operation of breaking through the Ardennes Region straight to Dunkirk.
Simply replacing the Ardennes Region with the Strandzha Mountains, the North Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and the final encirclement point at the coast, Dunkirk, with the important Ottoman city on the Sea of Marmara, Tekirdag.
Other details of the plan were also solidly prepared, including having the artillery unit quickly provide intense fire support at that time, then letting relatively mountain-warfare-capable light infantry units take the lead first, completing the initial uphill attack along the northern foothills of the Strandzha Mountains.
Once the infantry achieves the breakthrough and opens the initial enemy mountain vigilance defense line, upon entering the Tekirdag plain area bordering the Sea of Marmara, then let the tanks advance rapidly, serving as the vanguard spearhead of the entire relief force, thrusting all the way to the sea.
At the same time, several Germania corps commanders who followed Lelouch to reinforce the Bulgaria-Ottoman border, and Lieutenant General Kusmanek, commander of Ollie’s Army Group, after a simple military conference with him, all supported Lelouch’s plan.
Although Lelouch was only a brigadier general, far below those lieutenant general corps commanders in rank. But as Army Group Chief of Staff, many of his proposed operational plans could still be submitted to Army Group Commander Duke Rupprecht for approval, then required to be executed by each corps commander.
Before coming this time, Duke Rupprecht himself could not get away; he had to oversee the overall situation in Kyiv and complete the final annihilation of the Southwestern Front. So he gave Lelouch temporary authority to act on his behalf.
Before the troops set off, Duke Rupprecht privately met with those several corps commanders transferred south, instructing them one by one: once in the Bulgaria-Ottoman theater, execute whatever adaptability plans Chief of Staff Lelouch has, consider it already approved by me.
Unless there is a particularly urgent situation with obviously conflicting opinions, then request instructions remotely by radio, to minimize long-distance contact and also reduce leak risks.
Now, the several corps commanders all felt that Chief of Staff Lelouch’s plan had no issues and was not too risky, so there was no need to escalate it to the commander.
……
To ensure the suddenness of the action, to ensure the British Army would not run away before the assault, Lelouch had done a lot of preparatory work; it was not as simple as just making an operational plan.
How to get the troops to arrive early at the relatively concealed dense forest area on the northern foothills of the Strandzha Mountains, then hide without being immediately discovered by the Britannians?
The participating army exceeds 200,000 men; that many people moved south in batches, with up to ten days between the last batch and the first batch.
In these ten days, how could the early-arriving troops hide themselves and evade enemy aerial reconnaissance?
These issues all needed to be solved.
If not solved, although this battle could still be won, the results would not be great, leading to a large number of enemies successfully escaping.
Facing these problems, the other corps commanders of the German 6th Army Group, and the non-chief staff officers, initially had no particularly good solutions.
Fortunately, as a transmigrator, Lelouch had far more war history and conspiracy material in his mind than others. He quickly thought of a poisonous scheme.
First, have Germania National Railway Company personnel maintain normal operations of the Southeast European railways as much as possible, without adjusting the daily railway timetables in Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria due to inserted military trains.
And make public information like railway timetables even easier for enemy spies or scouts to steal.
The reason Lelouch did this was obviously inspired by some details before Operation Barbarossa on the Earth plane.
In the history of the Earth plane, there were many reasons Stalin ultimately did not guard against Barbarossa, but one was underestimating the Germanians’ railway timetable management capabilities.
Stalin thought: If the Germanians really wanted to move millions of troops and war materials east, they would inevitably have to disrupt the railway timetables to make way for those inserted trains.
But the Germanians could “ensure not a single original train was stopped or delayed while inserting 1.5 million extra railway cars”, so much so that Stalin’s spies did not detect drastic changes in enemy railway operations.
Lelouch was doing the same today; he would rather have the relief forces move south slower, more low-key, letting the Southern Front friendly forces grit their teeth and hold on bitterly for a few more days. He also had to ensure the southward movement of the relief forces was sufficiently low-key.
Even if the enemy predicted a southward movement, at least hope the enemy misjudged this specific time node. Let the enemy mistakenly think it would be after Christmas or even after New Year’s before fully moving south and preparing for counterattack.
Lelouch assembled over 200,000 troops and supporting equipment and supplies to move south, a full 1,100 kilometers, without causing even a single train on the original timetable to be late.
Of course, this was not Lelouch’s merit; he was just the one making requirements. He called his former old superior, Lieutenant General Karl Ludendorff, who had recently gone to the National Railway Company as deputy director（that is, Duke Rupprecht’s second brother）.
Lieutenant General Karl Ludendorff also particularly valued Lelouch’s needs, personally instructing all levels of management below to fully cooperate. The rest of the work was done by the National Railway Company’s management and frontline staff.
In short, the rigorous punctuality unique to Germania National Railway helped him complete this step.
……
And Lelouch’s second trick to lull the enemy and hide himself was to have the 6th Army Group’s combat reconnaissance aircraft unit act more frequently recently, patrolling more over the Strandzha Mountains and intercepting and shooting down British Army reconnaissance aircraft entering southern Bulgaria.
The main ridge of the Strandzha Mountains is now in British Army hands; precisely because they control this mountain ridge and feel they can hold it defensively, they dared to commit large main forces to the siege of Istanbul.
Otherwise, if this mountain ridge were in Bulgarian or Ottoman hands, General Hamilton would not dare, even with ten times the courage, to go all-out sieging Istanbul with such a top-heavy posture as now.
After controlling the Strandzha Mountains main ridge, the Britannians also frequently sent reconnaissance aircraft north to scout military movements in areas controlled by the Bulgarian army.
However, their vigilance focus was mainly on the plain area of the original Bulgaria-Ottoman border western section where the Strandzha Mountains do not extend, that is, the Bulgaria-Ottoman-Greece tripoint area.
For the dense forest area northeast of the Strandzha Mountains, British reconnaissance was not intensive; after the Germania army strengthened fighter patrols and interceptions, British reconnaissance aircraft were repeatedly shot down. To reduce losses and contract the reconnaissance area, they also limited aerial reconnaissance to the border western section.
In the view of the British Army air unit commander, with plain gaps available for attack, how could anyone bother crossing mountains through dense forests to attack.
Since reconnaissance aircraft were being shot down too much by the Germanians, of course concentrate forces and prioritize important areas.
Moreover, after concentrating reconnaissance fighters, even if encountering enemy interception, they at least had fighting power for self-preservation. If dispersed too much and caught isolated on missions, it would be certain death.
All these factors led the British Army to seriously underestimate the Germania relief forces.
They also expected that the Germanians would move south after completely clearing the enemies in the Kyiv grand encirclement.
But they thought it would not be so soon, perhaps needing at least five or six more days, or up to ten days or so.
The British Army also strengthened Northern Front defenses while attacking Istanbul, but with insufficient total forces, this defense had priorities.
The Bulgaria-Ottoman-Greece tripoint area is mainly plains, the easiest to breakthrough there, so over 80% of Northern Front defense forces naturally piled up there.
While the dense forest area of the Strandzha Mountains had defense forces accounting for only 20% of total defense forces, temporarily only serving a surveillance role.
……
December 23, Burgas Port in Bulgaria.
In the temporary command post of the German 6th Army Group in the city, a detailed map marking enemy and friendly force positions was already laid out before Lelouch.
Lelouch personally held the pointer, explaining the final enemy and friendly situation to Deputy Division Commander Rommel, who would be responsible for the specific armored assault task, Commander Kusmanek, and several other corps commanders:
“Is everyone prepared? If no issues, tomorrow night is the time for the general offensive! We have already scouted the enemy’s general force deployment.
Since landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula in August, the enemy has committed over 900,000 troops to the Ottoman-Greek theater, including over 200,000 native British soldiers, 300,000 Italian troops, 200,000 ANZAC Corps, 80,000 Canadian soldiers, 150,000 Indian Soldiers（including Sikh soldiers and Gurkha soldiers）
The three months of bloody battles have caused over 200,000 permanent combat losses, and the fierce fighting in the recent half month should have cost them another 50,000 to 60,000 across all fronts.
Current remaining total forces should be 650,000 to 680,000. Over 100,000 are pinned by Model on the Greek front line. Total forces in the Bulgaria-Ottoman area estimated at 520,000 to 550,000.
Of which about 400,000 are main attacking toward Istanbul, charging madly regardless of cost. And 120,000 to 150,000 for Northern Front defense or as second-line general reserves.
Northern Front defense troops, at least 100,000 deployed to the western section Bulgaria-Ottoman-Greece tripoint plain area, and in the past half month, they dug very deep trench networks there, almost matching Western Front battlefield fortification density in construction. Clearly they anticipated our possible southward attack, hence the tight defense.
But on the defense line eastern section, Strandzha Mountains dense forest area, including famous ancient Roman mountain-crossing passages like the ‘Bontu Ancient Road’, their defenses are lax, with only at most 20,000 to 30,000 or 30,000 to 40,000 frontline guard troops spread out for surveillance.
While our army has now assembled 3 corps from the German 6th Army Group, 2 corps from the Ottoman 3rd Army Group, total 5 corps, 13 infantry divisions, plus 3 cavalry divisions, 1 armored division, total force 270,000.
As long as the action is sudden enough, breaking through the enemy Northern Front defense troops should be easy. And once we breakthrough and cut the enemy into two segments front and rear, even if those 400,000 troops attacking Istanbul city immediately turn around to attack us, it is nothing to fear!
I believe that after switching to on-site defense, our 270,000 men can absolutely block the breakout of their over 400,000! Even with over 100,000 enemies supporting from behind. Everyone must have confidence; tomorrow night, general offensive as planned!
