Chapter 212: The Borderline

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The chirping of birds in the woods was refreshing. It was another peaceful and serene morning. This was the ceasefire line between Germany and Poland. There were no official documents, but this line had long since been drawn by German and Soviet diplomats, so the German army had halted its advance here.

The Polish defenders on the western front had been completely wiped out, and the eastern front was engaged in a fierce battle with the Soviet Union, so it was impossible for any fighting to occur here. The Germans were on leave, and the Poles had no reason to come over and provoke the Germans, who were no longer advancing.

On the third day after the German army arrived here, a Polish defensive unit began to set up a garrison on the opposite side. This pitiful Polish infantry battalion was facing an entire SS Panzer Division. Everyone knew what the outcome would be if the German army were to continue its advance, so these Poles only symbolically dug two trenches on the other side of the river.

Rein had often sat by his tank these past two days, watching the sunset. The afterglow was truly beautiful, a fiery red very much like a burning town, which could remind Rein of the good old days of slaughtering Polish tanks.

Rein’s Panther tank had undergone repairs. A new iron plate had been welded onto the slightly damaged front armor plate, which made his tank a little different from the others. But his tank was indeed different from the others, because painted on it was a number that inspired awe: 113.

This tank had destroyed 29 enemy tanks in one go on the German Eastern Front, and had also taken out 7 Polish trucks and 14 cannons. This combat record temporarily placed him at the top of the German armored forces’ killer list. He had heard from his regimental commander that after hearing Rein’s name, the Führer had smiled and decided to personally award this great tank commander the Iron Cross.

Two SS soldiers carrying rifles were patrolling along the road in the small town. They saw Rein’s tank parked on the side of the road, walked over to the tank, lit their cigarettes, and began to talk to Rein.

“When are we going to attack?” one of the patrol infantrymen asked after taking a deep drag from his cigarette. “We’ve been stopped here for a few days, and a lot of the infantry have already caught up. Are we really only going to take half of Poland?”

Rein leaned against the tank’s cannon barrel, a look of contentment on his face. He replied lazily, “If the higher-ups don’t let us attack, isn’t it nice to just rest like this?”

Andre, who was wiping the tank’s periscope on the side, laughed out loud after hearing this. Compared to the cold-blooded and crazy battlefield Rein, he much preferred the lazy little boy of the present. At least now, Rein seemed fine, without any problems.

“Hey, look at that! The Poles on the other side are sending things over again,” Baumann shouted from the top of the turret. “A lot of refugees. It looks like the Poles on the eastern front are about to break, too.”

Poland was now in a state of utter ruin. Everyone was on the road, fleeing from famine, because of the war, but even more because of hunger. People who had lost their homes struggled desperately to survive, but when they fled into the territory controlled by the Polish army, they found that life had become even more difficult.

Peasants who had lost everything, with their families in tow, carrying their luggage and bundles, with their elderly mothers and young children, embarked on the road of flight. At the beginning, everyone fled east, but after losing their land, houses, and food, more and more refugees began to head west. The road into the German-occupied zone was filled with a slow-moving crowd of people fleeing from eastern Poland. Some were on foot, some were on large carts, rickshaws, flatbed carts, cars… The shouts and curses of the people carried to the fields in the distance, blending into a continuous, low rumble, like the groan of a wounded beast bleeding into a long river.

The German army’s method of dealing with these people was also relatively simple. The able-bodied laborers and women were gathered together. These people were to be escorted to the vicinity of the original German-Polish border, where they would be assigned to work in large farms or light industry factories. Only after working for three full years could they be converted to official employees.

However, they were still provided with food and clothing according to the minimum ration, and collective housing was prepared for everyone. Of course, priority was given to those among them who had the elderly or children—this was a method that August and Akado had come up with together. Middle-aged laborers with children or the elderly were relatively stable and also easier to control and manage. Even if they fled, they would not be too fast. The Führer was very satisfied with this plan. This arrangement had greatly increased the speed of his plan to revitalize German light industry.

And those unaccompanied elderly or children were assigned to concentration camps to do hard labor. The fate of these people was rather tragic, because due to Germany’s limited national strength, the conditions within the concentration camps were somewhat left to their own devices.

In the past few days, more and more Poles had been coming to the German control line, wanting to return to their hometowns. Most were still the elderly and children, which kept the German garrison somewhat busy. They were responsible for screening these fleeing crowds and deciding whether to send them to the more favorable conditions of the original German-Polish border region or to place them in nearby concentration camps to work.

Thus, screening these refugees became a lucrative post. Often, these people, having heard from somewhere that Germany was selecting laborers, would use everything of value on their person to exchange for a spot to take refuge in Germany.

Some delicate teenage girls would rather stay in the nearby area and spend the night with a dozen German soldiers to get a chance to work in a German textile factory. It was obvious that they would also be eliminated after they went—of course, it was also possible that they would have to sleep with some other people to get the qualification to stay in the textile factory.

Of course, the old women and old men would smash their own dentures and take off the wedding rings they had worn for decades to bribe these German soldiers who held the power of life and death. But their fate was also extremely tragic. Often, after their property was taken, they were also sent to concentration camps to work.

On October 1, Akado personally ordered the construction of another 30 elderly concentration camps and 10 youth concentration camps in the occupied Polish territories. The supplies in these elderly concentration camps were very scarce, and it was destined that more than half of the elderly would starve to death. In contrast, the conditions in the youth concentration camps were slightly better, and the work was not too heavy, but they still had to engage in a lot of labor and learn German to obtain the qualification to get out.

These concentration camps, under a real-name system, were responsible for producing bedding, simple chemicals, brewing alcohol, producing iron chains, barbed wire, and other non-essential war materials. There were even several hazardous chemical factories and heavily polluting projects. In Akado’s plan, Germany was to use every laborer to produce materials for itself. And above this plan was a national policy that was different from Hitler’s.

Of course, on the original border between Germany and Poland, the defeated Poles found that the Germans were actually very easy to get along with. They were provided with arable land and production tools. All they had to do was to hand over half of their grain output. Of course, the other half belonged to the farm owner. And during the labor, professional personnel would come to supervise. As long as they diligently cultivated these lands for three years, one-tenth would be allocated to them as private property. This was obviously much better than those who would die of old age in the concentration camps.

Compared to the madness of Hitler in another history, Akado’s strategy was not necessarily much more brilliant, but he had cleverly divided the large group of Poles, splitting one force into several weak branches for management. When carving up the benefits, he even included some local people and Jews. This was much better than a simple policy of racial extermination, and the resistance it encountered was also much smaller.

Through the Greater German Party, Akado implemented the Greater Germanic Nation theory in the German-controlled areas. The basis of this theory was very simple: anyone of any nationality, as long as they were under German rule, had to acknowledge that they were a part of the Greater Germanic Nation. After a little bit of labor, even the civilians of the defeated country could join the great family of Great Germany and enjoy the benefits brought by Germany’s strength.

Although this robber’s theory, which was full of loopholes, was heavily criticized by the Western countries as soon as it was introduced, under the dual impetus of bayonets and potatoes with black bread, Germany’s gross national product had actually grown by 21% in a state of war. This achievement had to be said to be a victory for the aggressor: an economic glory built on a pile of bones, which concealed the hellish barbed wire exclusion zones in the forests of the border regions.

“Men, stand still! To the right! If anyone dares to sneak into the other line again, I will shoot them!” a SS infantryman with a submachine gun commanded loudly. Beside him, an SS officer sitting at a broken table was adjusting his glasses and looking at an exquisite watch.

And on the table in front of him was a pile of valuable objects such as gold rings, gold teeth, pocket watches, and gold chains. On the other side was a small, precise scale for weighing, and next to it, two clerks were recording the weight and appearance of these items in detail. It was clear that these SS were not embezzling, but were systematically collecting precious metals.

The Germans were scavenging everything. Gold, silver, copper, iron—as long as it was metal, the SS was ordered to collect it. With the outbreak of war, every gram of copper could be used to produce a weapon to kill the enemy. Therefore, not only were they collecting from the enemy prisoners, but even within Germany, the promotion of wooden forks and wooden spoons and other utensils had already begun.

“Hey, Rein,” Andre said, looking at the noisy “border inspection” not far away and patting Rein’s shoulder. “Do you think what we’re doing in this war is right or wrong? Can we win in the end?”

“I don’t know if what we’re doing is right or wrong, Andre. I only know that I was ordered to leave my hometown, to come here across a thousand li, to kill all the enemies who do not submit for the Führer and the fatherland,” Rein said, staring with an expressionless face at an old man not far away who was being shot for refusing to hand over his pocket watch and gold ring. “As for whether we can win, that’s not a question for me to think about. I am only responsible for striving for victory.”

“Heh,” Andre laughed, then jumped off the tank. “Living as simply as you do… that’s really good.”