Philadelpheia, Greek-Turkish border, August 10th, 1944
The train stopped once more. But this time the NKVD guards start barking for everyone to get out of the wagons immediately. The Greek families within, start wearily picking up their meager belongings and getting out. A week earlier NKVD had ordered them to pick up any belongings they could carry within two hours and then had shipped them out of their village in the Crimea. Then they had been boarded on the train and the train had start its trek eastwards, apparently on their way to central Asia. None had been allowed to leave the train even when it stopped to take more coal and water.
The deportees start looking around the train station. A town could be seen at the distance, with mountains rising further south. And it was hot. Quite a bit more hot than Crimea this time of year. The lead NKVD was talking with someone in a differently cut and colored khaki uniform, wearing a kepi hat of all things. More of his ilk totting rifles and sub-machine guns were around although it seemed as if they were more wary of the NKVD men than the deportees. But then who wasn't wary of the checkists? The chief checkist and his counterpart were finally satisfied and the deportees were ordered forward changing guards. An area close to the station had been fenced over with oddly shaped huts with red cross signs on them. One of the younger women dared to ask one of the new guards, in Russian of course, where they were. The new guard gave her a suspicious look.
"You don't speak Greek?" he asked her in Greek, not just Greek but her own Pontic dialect.
"Of course I speak Greek." she answered automatically. Her question whether that was allowed, was cut short as a light breeze made the flag on the flagpole flap. You couldn't mistake the Greek flag there for a Soviet one.
The gendarme saw her looking at the flag, did a double take and start laughing. "Welcome to Greece. The damn Russians didn't even tell you they were sending you off to the motherland?" He didn't get an answer. The woman, she was reminding him of his sister he thought absentmindedly, was too busy laughing. Then she fell on her knees and kissed the ground.
The doctor in charge in the nearest Quonset hut was already at work, to process this newest bunch of refugees. The process was not new. Inspect everyone for diseases, then to the delousing stations, then the refugees could be given clean clothing and some food, plenty of that now unlike the early years of the war. The doctor had been a member of
Alexandros Svolos socialists and somewhat sympathetic to the great Soviet ally, as many others, Triandafillov and his exploits in the Caucasus had been featuring prominently in Greek newspapers after all. Thus he hadn't been expecting to be treating Soviet Greek refugees of all things. But that was what he was doing for the past two months. Stalin had apparently decided the Greeks were "reviving private trade" and were a dangerous national element tied to the west. At least thankfully many of the Crimean Greeks had been holding Greek passports and the Greek embassy had taken wind of the deportations and informed Athens. Sofoklis Venizelos, the Greek foreign minister had offered instead for Greece to take any of the Greeks the Soviet Union did not want and asked for Hull and Eden to intercede with Molotov. Apparently they had caught Stalin in a good mood. Or he had decided it did remove the problem from his hand while getting the goodwill of Athens and more importantly Washington and London...
Wolfschanze, East Prussia, August 10th, 1944
Ion Antonescu had met Hitler for the eleventh time just a week ago when Hitler had summoned him in the aftermath of the July 15th plot. Now he was back in a hurry in view of the deteriorating situation in the Balkans. No spare divisions were available in Germany to shore up the crumbling Axis defenses in the Balkans. Reserves could come only from Romania but this would be impossible on the current front. Hitler had refused Antonescu's proposal to pull back on a shorter front that would free up forces in the previous meeting and had kept doing so afterwards. Which had brought Antonescu back to Germany and now even Hitler had to agree it was the only way. Army Group South Ukraine was ordered to pull back on a line from the Carpathians to Foscani, Namoloasa and Braila on the Danube. As soon as the retreat was complete the four mobile divisions in the army group reserve and the four divisions of the German XXXXIV corps would move south to reinforce the Bulgarians.
Stockholm, August 10th, 1944
The Swedish cabiet under Per Hansson was in session for the whole night. Contacts in the Finnish government had admitted that the news broadcasted from Moscow that Hamina had fallen two days ago were true. The Finnish army was still fighting hard and inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Soviets. But it appeared clear on the Swedish general staff that it had failed to stop them so far. Which was a problem. The last thing Sweden wanted was Soviet forts and ships in Aland. But Sweden's position was delicate. Under no circumstances could the Allies be alianeted...
Sofia, August 11th, 1944
Konstantin Muraviev was unhappy. He had become prime minister of Bulgaria, with the explicit goal bringing the war to a stop just the previous day. Now
Bogdan Filov the stronger of the three regents had summoned him to happily announce to him that seven German divisions and one Romanian would be redeploying in support of the Bulgarian army to stop the Allied offensive. Which was good news if one forgot said divisions would first have to pull back to the new defensive line in Romania and then redeploy. This was all taking time. Did he have the time? The news that Dupnitsa had fallen to the Greeks removed any doubts. The Greeks were now less than seventy kilometers from Sofia. Over difficult ground with about 150,000 Bulgarian soldiers between them and the capital. Only, general Trifonov the chief of the army staff had admitted to him that the army had suffered over a hundred thousand casualties since the start of the current battle. Muraviev didn't need to be told what that meant, he was a veteran of the Balkan wars and world war 1 and a graduate of the Bulgarian military academy himself. Something had to be done and fast. He didn't lose any time clandestinely contacting
Kimon Georgiev...
Ravna Gora, August 12th, 1944
Zaharije Ostojić read the radio message, just received from prime minister Jovanovic. "Skopje liberated by French Armee D' Orient. Army group continuing advance in direction of Kosovo and Nis. Initiate operation
Beli Orao with all possible haste." He didn't need more explanation. Since he had replaced general Mihailovic in command of the Chetniks he had pursued both tasks he had been given by Jovanovic before living Greece. He had led a much more vigorous campaign of raids and sabotage against the German supply lines to the south despite the increased German and Bulgarian reprisals against the civilian population. His second inadmissible task was to keep Serbia and Montenegro Chetnik dominated. His active campaign, unlike Mihailovic's passivity, had brought him recruits, he now had more than 50,000 men in Serbia, three times as many as the partisans and his 20,000 men in Montenegro also outnumbered the partizans if by a much smaller margin. His Chetniks had maintained a precarious relationship with the partisans, at times clashing openly, other times working together or at least not killing each other while the
AVNOJ and the government in exile in Athens remained separate. But now the orders from Athens said that the time for a general uprising had come...
Albania, August 12th, 1944
Tirana was liberated. With Allied armies advancing further east the Germans had finally decided to evacuate Albania. But they were not doing that either very fast or without a fight.
Falaise, Normandy, August 12th, 1944
Fifteen German divisions, or what remained of them after more than two months of constant fighting, were in threat of destruction as the Canadian 1st army and the US 3rd army pushed from north and south threatening to cut them off. Rommel would request an immediate withdrawal. Hitler would fail to agree...