The Missing Tooth...
An all new Volume #32 in the Kirov Series
Dear Readers, as the Keyholder’s Series grew to four books, I decided it would be best to move the opening volume, Field of Glory, to the #1 book in that series. I wanted it to also be in the Kirov series, but Amazon enforced a rule forbidding any book to be in more than one series. So I moved the old Volume #32 to the Keyholder’s series, and that left a hole in the #32 spot. It was throwing off the numbering of everything that followed it! To correct the problem, I told Amazon that I was going to write and place a new book in that spot, and here it is, an all new Volume #32 for the Kirov series.
This was a tricky project, because I wanted a story that would merge into the flow. What might it be? In Book #31, the Allies were looking at how to proceed in the Med after clearing Tunisia, while the Germans were trying to devise some new offensive plan after the failure of Zitadelle. Then I realized that the series had failed to cover the fate of Volkov’s Orenburg Federation after the fighting that occurred over the Maykop oil fields between Manstein and Volkov. There was the perfect campaign to insert into the #32 spot. Volkov betrays Germany and switches sides to join the Red Army. An outraged Hitler then tees up a big operation to crush him.
So here is the story of that campaign in the Caucasus, with all the planning sessions on every side, from OKW to Volkov’s new HQ at Astrakhan, to the Kremlin. I append Chapter 1 below to set the table. This book is complete and available now on Amazon,
Downfall
Chapter 1
Ivan Volkov had a plan.
But it was going to cost him.
In order to pull it off, he had to Kow Tow to the man he had been fighting against since the early days of the Russian Revolution. It had been Volkov, rising with Denikin, Kornilov, Wrangel, Kolchak and others in the so called White faction; opposed by Sergie Kirov, who stood atop the Bolshevik faction and its powerful Red Army. To have to swallow his pride now, lay down his sword and bury the hatchet with Kirov had galled Volkov, but it was a proverbial necessary evil.
Throughout 1941 and 1942, Volkov and his Orenburg Federation had fought on the side of the Axis powers, and he had been deemed a traitor to the Motherland in so doing. His longstanding feud with Sergie Kirov, and a new vendetta with Vladimir Karpov’s Free Siberian State, had been long and bitter. Now he had seen the true nature of the Nazi state and Hitler’s grand ambitions. Hitler’s “Plan Orient” had sent his legions into Syria and Iraq, to secure the oil fields near Kirkuk, Baba Gugur, and Basrah; and 1st Panzerarmee had driven deep into the Caucasus to secure the oil fields at Maykop, and go for Grozny and Baku. How long would it be, Volkov mused, before Hitler’s rapacious appetite for oil turned to the Caspian oil fields of the Orenburg Federation.
Volkov had been sharing that oil with the Nazi war machine, but that was a little like allowing a tiger to lick gravy off your hand. In time the animal would simply want more, and take a bite. This was what Volkov truly feared, because his vast oil reserves, found and developed because of his knowledge of their exact locations, were the most lucrative trade product his Federation had. That oil is what kept his own armies in the fight for places like Volgograd, Saratov, Samara, all frontier cities on his western border with Kirov’s Soviet Union.
How and when Volkov suddenly saw Hitler’s ambitions as more of a threat to his wellbeing than the Red Army is not entirely known by historians. Some argued that he came to the conclusion that the German Operation Edelweiss into the Caucasus would never share any gains they made there. Germany wanted all the oil it could get its hands on. The numbers on oil production for 1943 tell the story well enough. Germany would produce 5,647,000 tons from all sources, including Ploesti in Rumania, oil purchased from Volkov, and domestic production. At the same time, Britain, with her navy able to call at ports all over the world, would have a total of 14,828,000 tons of oil from all sources. That was a losing balance sheet in Hitler’s mind, because Germany’s Army was a thirsty machine, and oil was its lifeblood and energy. Somewhere in the dark calculus of his mind, Volkov made that determination, and with it came a sudden shift from being Germany’s ally to becoming a new and dangerous enemy.
To do this it meant first entering into long discussions with Sergei Kirov, asking him for an armistice, and then a Peace in exchange for his agreement to redeploy his armies against the German drive into the Caucasus. As much as he hated to do so, Volkov made that peace, and then a dramatic shift of his military assets was underway, the trains moving from his homeland provinces down through Astrakhan, and through the Kalmyk Steppe.
The German intelligence network could not help but notice this movement, which is why Hitler decided to transfer the overall command of Operation Edelweiss in the Caucasus from List and Kleist, to one Erich Manstein, the man who had just stopped the Russian advance on the Dnieper, and beaten back the surging armies of Kuznetsov, and Katukov after the German failure in Operation Zitadelle.
In truth, it was Hitler who first betrayed Volkov in the Caucasus. Volkov had long claimed that region, particularly the productive fields near Maykop, and Volkov had agreed to share that oil with the Third Reich. But Germany’s need was too great to share. The tiger wanted more than the gravy; Hitler wanted the meat; wanted it all, and he sent Erich Manstein to make sure he would get what he wanted.
First the German 11th and 17th Armies slowly ground down the last of Soviet resistance in the Caucasus, then tensions reached a breaking point when they met Volkov’s forces dug in west of Maykop. The Führer ordered his legions to take and occupy that place, and Ivan Volkov chose to stand his ground. The war in the east now threatened to spiral out of control, when the two allies locked horns and fought over Maykop. The betrayal enraged Volkov, and he used it to force himself to make peace with Soviet Russia, as much as he still hated the Reds, and Sergei Kirov in particular. Some historians said it was a matter of survival.
Allied with Hitler, Volkov was fighting a two front war, with the Siberians in the east along the Ob river line with the constant tussle over the city of Omsk, and the Soviets all along the Volga in the west. By switching sides Volkov avoided the costly commitments to those fronts in exchange for a new front against the Germans in the Caucasus. So Volkov started shifting troops to the Manych River line, forsaking his efforts to take and hold Volgograd, Samara and Saratov on the Volga. Instead of fighting over Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Omsk, he would now fight to gain Rostov, secure Maypop and protect the other oil fields in the lower Caucasus. The treaty had also involved Vladimir Karpov, and Sergei Kirov asked and convinced him to cease offensive operations against Volkov.
In this light, historians saw Volkov’s move to switch sides as no different than that of Spain when it grudgingly allowed Allied forces to move through its territory to take Gibraltar back, or more recently the decision made by Turkey to flip, declare war on Germany and move into the Allied camp. The Orenburg Federation was just the latest defector, but Hitler was out for vengeance now. He had indulged Volkov’s odd sorties against a seemingly insignificant rear area town called Ilanskiy, sending him transport planes that he could have put to much better use elsewhere. How dare Volkov bite the hand that had been feeding him, sending him arms and tanks to improve his fighting chances. Now, with this tectonic shift in the eastern front alliance puzzle, the war looked entirely different.
Hitler’s solution was predictable. He wanted a grand plan to deal with Volkov once and for all time and insure his complete downfall—and he wanted all his oil.
* * *
Sergie Kirov had no love for Volkov, rightly seeing him as a rebel, outlaw, and a traitor to the Motherland of Russia. His political ambitions had kept the wound of the Russian Civil War open for decades after its conclusion when the Whites sued for peace. Kirov chided himself then for failing to press on and eliminate the last rebel states of Orenburg and Free Siberia. Yet the peace brought him an alliance with Vladimir Karpov that had paid great dividends. Without the tough Siberian rifle divisions he sent, the Germans would have probably taken Moscow, and for years, Free Siberia prevented Volkov from throwing the full weight of his armies against the Volga defense line.
Now the second dividend of making this peace with Volkov was that all the armies Kirov had kept on the Volga line could be moved elsewhere. It had been agreed that the Volga would be a DMZ, where Orenburg and the Soviet Union might only assign border guards at major crossing sites. No regular army units were permitted by either side. That suited both men, for it then enabled them to throw the full weight of their armies at a common enemy—Nazi Germany.
“So,” said Kirov, “what do you think Volkov will do now, Berzin? How will he operate?”
“That’s easy,” said Berzin, Russia’s chief Intelligence officer under Kirov’s regime. “He’ll throw everything against the Germans and try to dominate the Caucasus.
“Isn’t he there in force now?”
“Not entirely. He has his 7th Army along the Manych River line, and 2nd Army on the lower Kuma River, screening Astrakhan, Parts of his 5th Army are near Grozny, the 3rd is near Volgograd, and his 1st Army has just been moved from Orenburg to Astrakhan, Guards and all. I think they will move it to Elista next, and then strike across the Manych. Several other armies will certainly be moved soon, the 3rd and 4th, and possibly the 6th and 8th on the Siberian front. Volkov will be more trouble for the Germans than they may realize. He’ll move all his airships to the Caucasus, and have some remarkable mobility with them if he can protect them from German fighters. Should we send him some planes?”
“No! I won’t lift a finger to help him. He must stand or fall on his own efforts. And the Germans? What will they do?”
“They will be coming south in force as well. I have picked up a new Operational Code word in message traffic—Untergang. It translates as Downfall. Our thinking is that Hitler wants revenge on Volkov for his treachery.”
“Yes, I understand that completely. Downfall… I like the sound of that.”
“You wish ill of your new ally?”
“Of course! He’s Ivan Volkov. I hope he hangs himself in the Caucasus, and speres me the job. It will be sweet watching my enemy, the Germans, destroy him.”
“This is good news for us, because the Fuhrer has been pulling quite a few rabbits out of his hat of late, and he seems to be sending them all south now.”
“How so?”
“He has a new division, the Brandenburg.”
“I thought they were all special forces battalions.”
“Yes, in the beginning, but remember, in the material they reorganize as a full blooded Panzergrenadier division later in the war. Here this is happening now. These are the same units Guderian took to Baghdad and beyond. We’ve identified at least three of the five brigades at Donetsk. They have been arriving by rail there for some days. I think they are slated for the Edelweiss campaign now, and Steiner’s divisions may be going there as well to join with 5th SS Wiking.”
“Good Lord! That’s a lot of power. Can they afford to move Steiner that far south with my Red Army pressing them so hard for the Dnieper?”
“They’ll find that out when we launch Orion against them.”
Orion was not an operational name that had been in the material, which were books Sergei Kirov had obtained about the war by using the stairs of Ilanskiy. It referred to the Constellation Orion, the celestial Hunter in the night sky, and it was a plan to drive the Germans back to the Dnieper after their failed Kursk Operation. Rumyanstev had been the first attempt, but Manstein had parried that and stopped their advance, saving Kharkov. Orion was meant to continue the advance, this time with a celestial name like earlier operations that had been named for the planets Uranus and Saturn. The two men also just called the Orion plan “Hunter.”
“The Germans are very vulnerable in the south. They should have abandoned the Caucasus long ago,” said Kirov.
“It’s the oil that sends them there,” said Berzin, “and now that Volkov has flipped to our side, Hitler will see his destruction as the Oil War he has wanted all along. This is perfect. He won’t be satisfied until he reaches Baku in the Caucasus, or Astrakhan in the Kalmyk region. But he will need Steiner for that. His regular army won’t get him there. Hence, we see this new division, even Grossdeutschland being reassigned to face Volkov’s forces. Let them kill Volkov. When they are done, we’ll just take Rostov and cut them all off. Can you believe our good fortune? No more Steiner! I know it was like drinking piss for you, but making this peace with Volkov was the best thing we could have done. Let the Germans send their Panzer wolves after him now, and after we defeat Germany, then we tear apart anything the wolves don’t kill.”
Kirov smiled. Yes, that is exactly what he would do. There must be no trace of any power in the hands of Ivan Volkov after this war. He must be completely crushed, and this German operation Downfall sounded like a very good start. It would tie up some of Germany’s best divisions, and kill his blood enemy at the same time. Perfect.
* * *
Manstein was not a happy man. He had been given the full details of the operation Hitler wanted in the south—Untergang, Downfall. And it was a single minded thrust to destroy Ivan Volkov’s empire and take all his oil. Unfortunately, it would need some of the best divisions in the Army to accomplish that, and all this while Hitler is moaning and groaning over his need to defend Greece, Italy, and soon southern France. This is why we will not see the 2nd SS Panzerkorps on the east front any time soon.
Unfortunately, I am the man he has given this operation to, and just when it seems the Russians will be teeing up a new push for the Dnieper. How can we hold the Don Basin and keep that front intact without Steiner, Grossdeutschland, Wiking, the Brandenburgers? He gives them all to me, but then orders me to use them to go after Ivan Volkov. Doesn’t he see that Sergie Kirov is the one other man on the field who could kill us? Volkov would never have the power. He’s a fool!
Now OKW tells me the 1st Orenburg Army has moved to Astrakhan. So I must get busy. The sooner I clean up this mess in the south, the better. The trouble is, if I do succeeded, and get the oil Hitler covets, he will want to hold on to it for the rest of the war! If I had those fields today, it would be a year before we saw even one drop of their oil. Does he think Volkov will leave them intact if he cannot hold them? Why can’t Hitler see these things? He was the one who always lectured me about the economic aspects of the war. But look what happened with Baba Gurgur. We took the field, but could not find a way to get any of that oil to Germany. The same can be said for Kirkuk, and Guderian never got as far as Basrah, nor will we ever go there now. Well, I’ve taken Maykop, but getting to Baku is a fool’s errand, and Astrakhan is even more foolish. Unfortunately, those are my orders, but who plays the fool on our side, Hitler, or myself? We’ll never hold those objectives for the duration of the war. The Russians will cut off anything we send south, and everyone in the General staff seems to know this but Hitler.
Alright… I’ve been given a military job, and I will do it the best I can. But God Help us if the Russians hit us again like they did with Rumyanstev. They’ll go all the way to the Dnieper! And when they get there, I’ll be stuck deep in the Caucasus or on the Caspian coast, and Sergie Kirov will be laughing his head off while Hitler moans that I must then come north and clean up another mess. It will be a thankless job.
Downfall, the new Kirov Series Volume #32 is availaable now.