Throughout the Battle of Kursk, the 9th Army of General Moder, to which Army Group Center belonged, was in the north of the Kursk salient, which had 21 German and 3 Hungarian divisions and 335,000 men, including 6 tank divisions with a total of 590 tanks and 424 artillery pieces. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

In the center of the salient is the 2nd Army of the German Army Group Center, 96,000 men, who will play an auxiliary role in this offensive, and the main task is to maintain the German forces between the north and south of the salient.

To the south of the salient was Manstein's Army Group South, including General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and Kempf's group. The 4th Panzer Army had 224,000 men, 925 tanks, and 704 artillery pieces under the command of the 52nd Infantry Corps, 48th Panzer Corps, and 2nd SS Panzer Corps, and the Kempf cluster on the right flank, with 10 divisions, 126,000 men, 344 tanks, and 25 artillery pieces.

In addition, about 20 divisions were deployed on the flanks of the various assault groups mentioned above. The aviation of the 4th and 6th air forces is responsible for supporting the army. In this way, the total strength of the German offensive reached more than 900,000 people, about 10,000 artillery pieces and mortars, 2,700 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 2,050 aircraft. The Germans also committed a large number of new weapons to the offensive, including Tiger and Leopard tanks and Ferdinand heavy assault guns (Sturmg/2) and self-propelled guns such as the Vespa, as well as Focke-Wolf 190A (FW-190A) fighters and "He-129" attack aircraft. The German army, which could be regarded as having made heavy bets, did not achieve the corresponding results, mainly because the Red Russian side was also fully prepared.

To the north of the Kursk salient, directly in the direction of the German Army Group Center was Rokossovsky's Central Front, which included the 70th, 13th, 48th, 60th, and 65th armies, as well as the 2nd Tank Army, with a total strength of 711,000 men, 11,000 artillery pieces and mortars, and 1,785 tanks and self-propelled guns. Since the Red Russian Army believed that the powerful German Army Group Center would take on the main attack of the German army, the Red Russian Army was also the strongest in this direction, and Marshal Zhukov personally commanded here.

To the south of the Kursk salient, facing Army Group South was Vatutin's Voronezh Front, which commanded the 6th and 7th Guards Armies, the 40th, 38th, and 69th Armies, the 1st Tank Army, and the 35th Infantry Army, with a total strength of 625,000 men, 8,718 artillery pieces and mortars, and 1,704 tanks and self-propelled guns.

And in the rear of the Central Front and the Voronezh Front was Konev's Steppe Front, whose task was to provide reinforcements to both fronts when the situation was tight, and as soon as the Kursk Line was broken through by the Germans, it would become the last line of defense, and when the Red Russian army switched to a counteroffensive, it would be a new force. This front army has jurisdiction over the 4th and 5th Guards Army, the 27th, 47th, and 53rd Guards Army, the 5th Guards Tank Army, the 3rd, 5th, and 7th Guards Cavalry Corps, the 4th Guards Tank Army, and the 1st and 3rd Guards Mechanized Armies. The total strength is 573,000 men, 8,510 artillery pieces and mortars, 1,639 tanks and self-propelled guns.

According to a secret document of the Chinese Social Survey Department about the 2nd SS Panzer Army, some experts believe that the description of the battle is not accurate. This information shows that, first of all, the 2nd Panzer Army did not have more than 700 tanks as recorded in the historical records, and even before the start of the campaign, the 2nd Panzer Army had 211 tanks with full combat effectiveness. Secondly, in the battle, the 2nd Panzer Army really suffered fewer losses, as it was claimed. According to an internal count of the German army on July 13, the 2nd Panzer Corps lost 48 of the 163 tanks that could fight after this battle. This was much smaller than the losses of the 5th Panzer Army of the Red Army. According to other intelligence, the 5th Panzer Army of the Red Russia needed to overhaul only 350 tanks after the battle on the 12th. Although the book does not record the number of tanks lost by the Red Russian army, this figure is enough to prove that the Red Russian army paid a huge price in this battle. Some of the source materials of the Red Russian period even have the text: "The 5th Tank Army lost about 1500 tanks in this encounter. ”

Based on these declassified materials, historians have redescribed the battle that took place 55 years ago: a deafening roar of tank motors was heard near the positions of the Führer's Guards Division of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, indicating that a Red Russian armored unit was heading here. At about 5 o'clock in the morning, hundreds of Red Russian tanks appeared at the front of the position, most of these tanks were Soviet T-34 tanks and T-70 tanks, divided into 40 to 50 groups and rushed to the German positions, and the tanks also carried infantry. Seeing this, the Germans immediately plunged into battle. Suddenly, artillery and armor-piercing shells exploded in the positions of both sides, and the smoke of gunpowder enveloped the entire land. As soon as the battle began, the Red Russian T-34 tank went straight to the enemy position. However, the T-34 tank's 76-mm gun could not hit the German tanks at long distances, so a large number of Red Russian tanks were destroyed by the German "Tiger" tanks before they approached the enemy. After the battle, hundreds of wreckage of Red Russian tanks were on the battlefield, and the Su-181 tank regiment was killed in the battle.

If this were the case, then the history of the operations on the Eastern Front in Europe would have been rewritten, and the battles would not have been a watershed moment in the entire campaign, as the conventional wisdom had suggested, and would not have been the root cause of the total retreat of the German army on the Southern Front. In fact, after the battle, the German army still had strong combat strength, and made some progress in the fighting in the following days, encircling several infantry positions of the Red Russian army and occupying some highly strategically valuable heights. So, what caused the Germans to finally abandon the offensive on the Southern Front and retreat with the whole army? Experts believe that the reason for the German army to withdraw from the battlefield in the first place is precisely that the German army is no longer able to support the subsequent counterattack operations, thus dragging the war into a senseless war of attrition.

The General Staff of the Chinese Wehrmacht estimated the losses of the German army at about 360,000 killed, wounded, missing, captured, 1,500 tanks and self-propelled guns destroyed, and 1,030 aircraft destroyed. On the corresponding basis, 863,303 Russian troops were killed, wounded or captured (177,847 in the Kursk defense, 429,890 in the Orel offensive and 255,566 in the Pyrgorod-Kharkov offensive), 6,799 tanks and self-propelled guns were destroyed, and 2,200 aircraft were damaged or shot down.

Such losses are difficult for both sides to bear, and even without China on the Eastern Front, Russia and Germany will not be able to continue this high-intensity fierce war. The timing chosen by the Chinese Defense Forces coincided with the time when the Red Russian army had just achieved a phased victory, but suffered heavy losses in personnel and equipment, and the division's veterans were tired, and the main force was far away from the Eastern Front. The 300,000-strong Eastern Front was in fact nothing more than a so-called assault battalion composed of second-line troops and some reform-through-labor elements, lacking heavy weapons, especially anti-aircraft artillery and long-range anti-armor firepower. Not to mention the formed armored corps, there are very few cars that can be used for mobility, and the only thing that is not lacking is the Cossack cavalry with more than 30,000 horses, but on the frontal battlefield, this ancient type of army cannot compete with the Chinese air cavalry.

From Omsk to Nazivaevsk, then Isim and Goreshmanovo, the 12th Army crossed the attack distance of 700 kilometers in just 4 days, and quickly advanced to the Tyumen region along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Russian defense line on the way did not even have many opportunities to open fire, as long as it was not camouflaged in place, it became a target for air strikes, there was no threat of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns, and attack helicopters were used as the vanguard of armored groups, Often, when the armored troops of the 12th Group Army of the Chinese National Defense Forces meticulously lined up in a wedge-shaped attack formation, and then charged towards the enemy's established positions, most of the targets that could be found were some red Russian infantry who were stunned and stunned and walked around the world. Occasionally, one or two 37-mm anti-aircraft guns became a feast for the "Snow Leopard" tank, so that the infantry fighting vehicles following behind did not even have a chance to open meat. The infantry were even nested in armored transport vehicles, with submachine guns but could not find a few targets to shoot, and the entire armored cluster was more like a mobile material recovery company, with cameos to work for a corpse collection team. The only remaining 400 fighters of the Russian army on the Eastern Front did not even have a chance to take off, and were scattered and hidden in caves in the woods, and in the end many of them became trophies of the Chinese National Defense Forces, resulting in the red Russian fighters painted with red five-star red Russian fighters on the squares of many Chinese cities later.

On August 24, the gunfire of Tyumen subsided, and only one B-class army of 110,000 men caused the Red Russian Eastern Front to lose more than 20 divisions and more than 100,000 troops. The most unacceptable thing for the Red Russian High Command is that there are four foreign motorized infantry divisions in this group army, and the 52nd motorized infantry division composed of the second generation of Belarus has the most outstanding record.

"Let that old bastard Budyonny get back, I don't believe that 300,000 Red Russian fighters can't wipe out 10,000 White Russian bastards. He is simply a disgrace to our Red Russian army, let Marshal Timoshenko go and replace him, tell Semyon. Konstantinovich. Comrade Timoshenko, in any case it is necessary to hold the Yekaterinburg line and not allow the Chinese to cross the Ural Mountains. The bearded man roared in his underground bunker, Zhukov understood what the Supreme Commander meant, if China broke through the Ural defense line, the German army would definitely go all out to increase its troops to the south, break through the Don River defense line, advance east and west, and once the division was met, it would cut off Russia's north-south communications, and the fate of Red Russia would be decided by God Almighty, obviously the Georgian bearded comrade in front of him did not intend to cede this right to God and his old man.

But can the change really work wonders? Zhukov is not sure about this, although Budyonny is conservative, basically relying on the defense line to resist step by step, strictly guarding to the death, and looking like a turtle shell is hard for you to smash. But in Zhukov's impression, the Eastern Front has always been in confrontation with the Chinese army, and there are constant large and small conflicts, so how could the army, which should know the Chinese Defense Forces best, be so embarrassed? If you change to yourself, I am afraid that you can recover some losses, and as for the division and encirclement of mechanized troops and annihilation of the White Russian division, this is no less difficult than killing Hess.