Chapter 753: The Second Battle of Moscow and a White Army Victory Parade
With the Soviet's Red Army Counter-Offensives in 1942 and the beginning of 1943 broken, as well as fresh reinforcements from the Axis Central Powers (including rearmed Red Army POW's who now served in the White/ Imperial Russian Tsarist Army, the Axis Central Powers had decided it was time for a new offensive of their own. Originally they had planned to take Moscow in 1941 but this ambitious plan soon clashed with reality, when the Red Army proved to be much more resistance and able in fighting then the previous skirmishes and fights against the Finnish and Baltic/ East European States had made them look. But in 1942 the Axis Central Powers offensive concentrated on the Caucasian region further south and managed to not only secure and conquer the Caucasian Oil Fields in the Caucasian campaign to secure their oil for the Axis Central Powers. Therefore the planned operation again Moscow had to be rescheduled as a new Soviet Red Army Offensive with fresh Western Siberian reinforcements across the Frontline in the Winter of 1942 and against St. Petersburg preoccupied the Axis Central Power Forces (mainly the Germans, Russians, Austria-Hungarians, United Baltic, Finnish and Ottoman ones). This Axis Central Power defenses even included Tsaritsyn (the former Stalingrad) against a new Red Army Offensive. So in 1943 the Axis Central Powers started the Second Battle of Moscow with around 2,000,000 to 2,400,000 Axis Central Power Forces, including 2,500 to 3,400 tanks, 16,000 artillery, guns and mortars and around 2,600 aircraft who would be facing off against. 1,800,000 to 2,230,000 Red Army soldiers with 6,000 to 8,000 tanks (most without sufficient fuel by now), 40,000 to 50,000 artillery, guns and mortars as well as 3,000 to 4,000 aircraft (most without sufficient fuel by now). While more fuel and supplies were coming in by the Allies over Persia, Stalin himself had refused to use Allied forces, transport vehicles and soldiers to speed up the process, or even openly aid him in fighting the Axis Central Powers and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, as doing so would have shown he realized on them, had the situation no longer under control and had become weak, something Stalin did not want to show as his fear of losing the conflict and his paranoia and mistrust against even his own allies grew stronger each day.
So when the Kalinin Front, the Western Front and the Brjansker Front were heavily assaulted by the Axis Central Powers, Stalin lacked the reinforcements and supplies he could have easily gotten had he not outright refused them. With the chorus of religious and patriotic Russian songs, the Tsarists Forces, accompanied by their German, Austrian, Hungarian, Baltic, Finnish marched on Moscow fighting vicious in the heavily entrenched and fortified outside bunker positions of the city and encircling these main defenses with two spearhead offensives from the north and the south. Most of the Red Army tanks in the capital meanwhile remained in fixed defensive positions as nearly all tank forces lacked fuel by now, the same was true for much of the air force, leaving air superiority and mobility in Axis Central Power hands, something that would become critical for their overall victory during the Secodn Battle of Moscow. In fear of new protests, riots and uprisings Stalin had ordered a curfew and his militia, NKVD, commissaries and Red Army soldiers would shoot anyone on the spot who tried to oppose said orders. Further more some male civilians were pressed into Patriotic Banners, badly armed Soviet militias to defend the capital while their wives, daughters and sons were forced to work labor in help of prepare defensive trenches, anti tank ditches and moats, as well as wooden and concrete bunker positions. While many of the Soviet Leadership had by now been evacuated, Stalin himself refused to do so at first, claiming it would break Russian morale and under force even had prevented civilians from escaping, claiming his soldiers would defend a populated city much more fanatical and with much more fire in their hearts. In the next nearly four months parts of the nearby frontline would change and Moscow would be surrounded, slowly the defenders were outflanked and overrun by Axis Central Powers Forces. The sound of church bells ringing in cities far away had signaled the start of the Axis Central Power Offensive and now the very same sound from inside Moscow showed which city parts were under enemy control, so Stalin ordered to blow up the remaining churches that still stood by now and melt their bells for ammunition and armor.
As more and more parts of Moscow fell, Stalin, unlike he had promised escaped in a armored train eastwards, alongside Beria, and Molotov to reach Kuybyshev (the former Samara) in the east. In 1935, Samara was renamed Kuybyshev in honor of the Bolshevik leader Valerian Kuybyshev. During the Second Great War, Kuybyshev had been chosen to be the alternative capital of the Soviet Union should Moscow fall to the invading Axis Central Powers, with much of the government and bureaucracy evacuated to there till 1943, a move that had been started in 1941, as the Communist Party and governmental organizations, diplomatic missions of foreign countries, leading cultural establishments and their staff were evacuated to the city. A dugout for Joseph Stalin himself known as "Stalin's Bunker" as well and was now planned to serve as his center of command during this Great Patriotic War. To mark its role as wartime national capital a special Revolution Day parade was held at the city's Kuybyshev Square on November 7, 1941. As a leading industrial center, Kuybyshev played a major role in arming the country. From the very first months of World War II the city supplied the front with aircraft, firearms, and ammunition. Health centers and most of the city's hospital facilities were turned into base hospitals. Ethnic minority, non-Russian military units were formed on the territory of the Volga Military District. Samara's citizens also fought at the front, many of them volunteers. Nearby Kazan, originally a secondary possible war-time capital as well had itself many industrial plans and factories as well, most relocated from the west like most all over western Siberia, making the city and others new military industrial centers that continued to produce tanks, planes and other equipment. With nearby oil fields in the Volga-Ural-Caucasian Sea area the Soviet Union government and the Red Army were unwilling to give up, even after Moscow had fallen, however one thing massively changed, when during his train passage with Beria and Molotov, Stalin according to their claims fell from the train in the frozen ice while smoking his pipe (a lie as the later found body clearly had been shot in the back of his head) and the New Triumvirate of Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Malenkov, and Vyacheslav Molotov took over the Leadership of the Soviet Union afterwards until the Fall of the Soviet Government and the Fragmentation of the Soviet Union after the Second Great War during the Second Russian Civil War.
Meanwhile the Axis Central Powers, lead by the Tsarists Russian Forces, followed by the Germans and other Axis Central Power Forces. Churches were reopened with ringing bells, Soviet banners, symbols and statues smashed while portraits and photos of the Tzar Vladimir were openly displayed and a overall joy and relieve washed over the city, not only that the fighting was over, but also that's Stalin's oppressive tyranny, control and censorship was finally gone. People claimed that whoever had been there even felt it in the air. But unlike the German Emperor Wilhelm III and many in his High Command had hoped, the Soviet Union did not simply capitulate after the Fall of Moscow, unlike France had done before, despite the fact that the Axis Central Powers already had installed a parliamentarian monarchist opposition government that even had held it's first free elections in those parts of the country already liberated. It was also a huge move for the Axis Central Powers Propaganda as the eastern enemies capital had fallen once again and they could claim a major victory, while it at the same time forced the Allies to dramatically speed up their plans for a Invasion of Central Europe, a move then made to early, to ill prepared and to hasty by them as a result. Found archives and documents leftover or not yet destroyed by the Soviet government also showed that there had been mass purges, executions, planned starvation, deportations and a system of Gulag prisons for internal enemies of the state that had killed millions most likely. This news turned out to be a incredible good propaganda for the Axis Central Powers as well as the Co-Prosperity Sphere in their fight against the Soviet Union and the Red Army, even if the Soviet Triumvirate and parts of the Allies at first denied that anything like this had ever happened. Over time however the proof of this crimes, including western journalists seeing some liberated Gulags or speaking to survives of the system became so overwhelming that it outright tainted all Allied-Soviet relations after 1944 and ended all aid and supplies given to the remaining Soviets and the Red Army in the following years. At the same tiem Axis Central Power aid for the liberated White Ruthenian, Ukrainian and Russian nations increased thanks to Germany and Austria-Hungary, while the Second Ottoman Empire supplied Turkish and Mohammedan regions in Central Asia after the Second Great War.