Chernihiv, the city was under the direct military control of the German army. Most of the citizens here are ethnic Ukrainians, but about 30% are ethnic Russians, and Jews were wiped out in the early days of the war.

There had never been organized street fighting in the city, and the Soviets were defeated too quickly at the beginning of the war, and the army did not withdraw into the city for defense, and naturally did not mobilize the citizens. When the Germans entered the city, the rebels were basically sporadic soldiers who fled into the city, as well as some vigilantes.

In the initial law and order war, the Germans eliminated the apparent resistance and killed a large number of innocent people. The arrival of the German army meant a lot for the city, and some of the citizens here, who were willing to serve Germany, went to fight Stalin, to create a state of their own for the Ukrainians.

Therefore, the German army recruited more than 20,000 young and strong laborers in the city, whether these people were voluntary or forced, they all served as logistics personnel of the German army, transporting supplies for the German army on the front line, and even at some special moments, they were asked by the German officers and soldiers on the front line to take up arms and fight against the Russians!

The population of the city has plummeted due to the war, from 200,000 inhabitants in Chernihiv before the war, to 150,000 after a year of German rule. Most of the inhabitants were young and old, women were few, young and middle-aged men were few, and the whole city was in a depression.

A large number of civilian houses were vacant, and the Germans took advantage of them. The citizens were driven to the unified quarters, and the Germans converted the vacant civilian houses into military quarters.

More than five thousand troops were stationed inside the city, most of them puppet police regiments made up of Ukrainians, and the German regular army usually had only one regiment.

With the entire 634th Division moving in, the city became a huge barracks, and the German division commander also moved the division headquarters to the former municipal office. All of this stems directly from the fighting that began on May 5 with the Soviets, which led to the movement of German forces in the area.

Until then, the city was under the control of the German puppet municipality, nominally under the control of the Ukrainian puppet regime. At the moment, it is completely miracularized!

The organized acts of vandalism in the city never stopped, so the gallows in the city square were hung every once in a while to hang a few captured guerrillas. Of the many hanged victims, a considerable number were purely scapegoats!

The killing was more of a vent for the anger of the German army and the puppet army, which only strengthened the Soviet underground workers to strengthen their will to fight, and induced more wavering people to turn into rebels!

The Germans called these partisans "rats", and they did behave like rats, i.e., they lay in the middle of the day and went out at night. When night fell, the hidden telegraph machines began to work, and the underground radio stations in Chernihiv went into action.

The Germans knew about the existence of these "rats" early on, but it was not easy to capture these people hiding in dark corners and separate them from the general population.

Due to the large-scale military offensive of the 17th Soviet partisan brigade on May 5, the German troops stationed in Chernihiv were forced to strengthen their defenses, they had to guard against the enemy outside the city, and even more so to clear the "sewers" inside the city and eliminate all the "rats".

This time, Hendryson received an order from his superiors to defend the city, and at 23 o'clock that night, he issued an order to purge the city of saboteurs.

Just a few days ago, a dozen special trucks drove into the city.

At first glance, these look like ordinary thinly armored trucks, with a lot of stuff inside their enclosed compartments. It is equipped with a radio detection device, which has a simple mechanism and can only measure the strength of the radio within a radius of 1.5 kilometers and the strength of the signal.

These trucks were an important tool for searching for Soviet partisan telegraphers, and through a simple triangulation, only three radio detection trucks were needed to link up, and finally the strongest signal came from which building it came from, and finally let the military police conduct a major search.

Because these trucks resemble the usual German city patrol vehicles, they will naturally not attract the alarm of the German army when they join the German night patrol.

The work of these underground workers in the Soviet Union was by no means as powerful as the propaganda suggested. The special work of these people made it inevitable that there would be some flaws, for example, they only knew that the Germans were shrinking their forces towards Chernihiv, and they were completely unaware that they had planted some radio detection vehicles.

Also at 23 o'clock in the evening, Salinchkin, deep in the swamps, sent a telegram in the direction of Chernihiv in the name of a partisan republic, declaring that on the morning of May 22, the Soviet army would launch rockets into the city for tactical bombardment. The task of the rebel groups in Chernihiv was to lie dormant in the city, faithfully record the effects of the bombardment, and report back to the guerrilla republic in a timely manner.

The Chernihiv rebels were well received by the mission, and they urgently held a meeting in the basement of the stronghold.

Everyone was puzzled by the order from the other side of the swamp.

"Are our troops just outside the city? Bombarding the city with rocket artillery? Is this really possible? ”

"Are they kidding? Our rocket launchers can fly up to eight kilometers, and each one is bulky, is there a mistake in the translation of the code? Is it really rocket artillery? ”

After all, Salinchkin did not say any details on the telegram, and he himself knew very little about the details of the Exocet, so he only gave a simple order. He didn't ask for much, he just needed these people to send back a report of the rocket explosion in the city tomorrow afternoon, and it would be great if there were still some details of the explosion!

Salinchkin went to rest with confidence, he did not know that Chernihiv was not peaceful tonight!

At night, the underground Chernihiv rebels enter a daily period of euphoria, especially in the hours between midnight and dawn, when their telegraph machines never stop.

In addition to receiving telegrams from the guerrilla republics, they were also responsible for exchanging information with their comrades-in-arms in several nearby cities, and liaising further afield with Bryansk, Shostka, and even Kiev.

Under the Axis occupation, there was a vast underground communications network in the vast Soviet occupied area, which was connected by a large number of Soviet spies, and a large amount of intelligence was transmitted daily and sent to Moscow's national intelligence services for analysis.

These Soviet telegraph operators, who were active underground, risked their lives every time they transmitted information, and from the moment they swore to fight for the Soviet Union, they put their lives and deaths on the line. They are all mentally prepared to sacrifice, but they don't know in what form they will be sacrificed!

The largest stronghold of the rebels in Chernihiv is located in the basement of a private house. On weekdays, the door to the basement is always locked and covered by some clutter, and the house is owned by an elderly couple. The couple never accepted food gifts from the guerrillas, but went every day to receive the poor ration of a few potatoes.

Because the old man's son died in battle, they hated the invaders, but this old body could no longer fight, so they avenged the dead relatives by supporting the rebels.

They lived in poverty and their houses were relatively dilapidated, that they never aroused the suspicion of the German military police.