Section 536 The largest encirclement of Kiev

On the southern flank of the Red Army's Southwestern Front, the Germans forced their way across the Dnieper River on the night of 20 August and captured a landing ground in the Kremenchuk area (later known as the Kremenchuk stronghold). The 38th Army, which operated www.biquge.info there (transferred from the base camp reserve to the Front), failed to clear the landing site. On September 12, the 1st Tank Group launched an attack from this landing site in the general direction of Lubne. The Red Russian army was in danger of being encircled at this time, and the commander of the Red Russian Army's Southwestern Front, Admiral Kirponos, in order to preserve the vitality of the Red Russian army, regardless of the danger of being sent to a military court, ordered the troops to retreat on all fronts, but this order was quickly revoked by the Red Russian High Command, and the Supreme Commander of the Red Russian Army instead demanded that the Southwestern Front implement more active tactics and launch a counteroffensive against the German army. The Red Russian army missed the last opportunity. On 16 September, as Yeremenko of the Bryansk Front failed to fulfill his promise to the Zhulishviks to "crush Guderian", Guderian joined forces with Kleist's panzer group at Lokhvica, and the Southwestern Front was surrounded by the Germans. As a result, the four armies of the Southwestern Front, namely the 21st (transferred from the Bryansk Front to the Southwestern Front on September 6), the 5th, 37th, and 26th armies, fell into encirclement.

Since September 16, the German army, mainly the 2nd Army and the 6th Army, has launched an encirclement and annihilation operation against the 5th, 21st, 38th, and 26th armies of the besieged Red Russian Army. The Red Russian troops trapped in the bag-shaped position resisted desperately, and the stirring speech of the Julisheviks from the loudspeakers on the position spread throughout the battlefield. With no fuel and no ammunition, the Red Russian army raised its bayonets and launched a number of brave attacks against German tanks, artillery and machine guns, in an attempt to break through the encirclement and retreat eastward. However, the flesh and blood were finally outnumbered by steel, and the Red Russian army was killed and wounded by thousands of people under the shelling, strafing and crushing of German tanks, and its main force was still under siege except for a few units that escaped. On September 20, the city of Kiev was captured by the German 6th Army. On the same day, the German 46th Panzer Corps arrived and entered the battle as a new force. At the same time, the Red Russian army also continued to invest new forces in an attempt to assist the trapped Red Russian army to break through, but they were all repelled by the German army.

The troops of the Southwestern Front were quickly divided and surrounded by the Germans and fell into disarray. On September 17, the Zhulishviks asked the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Russian Army, Red Russian Marshal Shaposhnikov, to order the approval of the breakthrough of the Southwestern Front, but it was too late. On September 19, Kiev fell, and the 37th Army was forced to move to the Yagotin region. The Southwestern Front continued to fight while encircled. Attempts to relieve it were inconclusive due to insufficient troops. From 16 to 20 September, the Southwestern Front was divided into six defensive forces by the Germans: the 26th Army, stationed 20 to 30 km north of the town of Zolotonosa, held out in the Orzhtsa area until 24 September; The 37th and 26th armies, stationed 40 to 50 kilometers southeast of Kiev, held out until 23 September; The 21st Army, stationed southeast of Periyakin, held out until 23 September; The 5th Army, stationed east of Pelyakin, held out until 23 September; The 37th Army, stationed 10 to 15 kilometers northeast of Kiev, held out until 21 September; The 37th Army, which was stationed in the Yagotin area, held out until 26 September.

Only part of the army was able to break through to the east* in small groups, and a total of 20,000 officers and men were finally able to break through the German encirclement. On September 20, the commander of the Front, General Kirponos, the military councilor, Burmystenko, and the chief of staff, Major General Tupikov, were killed in the breakout battle, the commander of the 5th Army, Major General Potapov, was captured, and on September 26, the Southwestern Front was basically annihilated. On September 27, the Southwestern Front (40th, 21st, 38th, 6th armies), which was taken over by Marshal Timoshenko of Red Russia, was given the task of organizing a strong defense on the Belopoliye, Hisaki, and Krasnograd fronts. This battle was the largest encirclement and annihilation battle in the history of warfare.

By September 26, the Battle of Kiev was over, most of the 5th, 21st, 37th, and 26th armies of the Red Russian army, and some of the 40th and 38th armies were annihilated, and 650,000 people were captured. The commander of the South-Western Front, Kilponos, the chief of staff, Tupikov, and the political commissar Bulmyshtenko were killed in the breakout, and the commander of the Soviet 5th Army, Potapov, was captured in battle.

The campaign lasted more than two and a half months and was fought over a large territory of more than 300 kilometers on a front and about 600 kilometers in depth. The Red Russian army lost about 700,000 people, 665,000 were captured, and the Germans destroyed or captured 884 tanks, 3,718 artillery pieces, and 3,500 vehicles. The Germans also lost more than 100,000 men. Around September 16, more than 600,000 Red Russian troops were encircled, the fate of the encircled Red Army has been doomed, for the Russians, the scope of the encirclement is unbelievable, because there is no motorized force or military genius leadership, they cannot break through the encirclement, the German 17th Army Corps and the 6th Army Corps of Army Group South and the 2nd Army Corps of Army Group Center continue to shrink the encirclement with the support of armored forces, the encircled Red Russian army did not give up Kiev easily, and the Red Russian soldiers were eliminated by German artillery, tanks and aircraft in a brutal battleFinally, 10 years later, on September 26, the last Red Russian army surrendered east of Kiev, the Germans claimed to have captured 600,000 Red Army soldiers, and Führer Hess happily declared in Berlin that "this is the greatest battle in history, and never before in the history of mankind can annihilate so many enemies." ”

"The Germans have begun to recover, and they think that if we contain a large number of Russian troops on the Eastern Front, they will be able to take Moscow in one fell swoop." Wu Chenxuan said as if talking to himself. Zhang Jianyuan, Zhu Yunjie, Zhou Zhongfu, Li Weichang, and Deng Xianxian were all thinking, the war situation in the north seemed to be calm, and the steps of the offensive seemed to be as accurate as measured by calipers, Lin Huaiqing's command ability plus the armed forces of the three group armies and the First Air Force of the Royal Air Force was enough to bring enough oppression to the 850,000 Red Russian troops on the Eastern Front, and two months after the war began, the front of the Chinese Defense Forces had advanced to the Tomsk region, facing the Great Plain of Western Siberia, fifteen armored divisions, The 5,000 armored fighting vehicles of the infantry division, supported by absolute air supremacy and precise artillery support, especially sufficient and timely logistical supplies, can exert more power under such near-ideal conditions than the German army with only a dozen panzer divisions (in the standards of the Chinese Wehrmacht, it is only a semi-mechanized unit between the previous generation of mechanized divisions and motorized infantry divisions).

"Let's let Xiao Lin take it first, don't take too big steps. Otherwise, it is not easy to make money from the rush of trading. Deng Xianxian spoke first, this foreign minister was more like a businessman.

"Kobayashi's side has begun to converge, and after consolidating the connection with Astana, the task of integrating the Northwest Military Region and the Northern Dispatch Army will allow him not to make major moves for a month or two. When the autumn comes, we can arch a little further, strive to control the Omsk region, clear out the 500 to 800 km separation zone before winter comes, get out of direct contact with the Russian army, and strive not to have a large-scale ground operation this winter. Zhang Jianyuan's words sounded very peaceful, but everyone sitting there understood that this was to strive to obtain an air base to attack the core area of western Russia before winter came, and then to prevent the Russian army's counterattack on the ground, and to consume Russia's war potential through air strikes, and to join Germany in the Ural region in the spring of next year, of course, if the Germans were able to do it.

The Germans were already caught in the battle for the east bank of the Dnieper, Army Group South had used its strength to the extreme, and in order to fight for Ukraine, the main armored forces of Army Group Center were also transferred, and Man Shuai did not have Guderian's Second Panzer Army in his hands, and the aviation could not fully support, so he had to slow down the momentum of the offensive. The only good news was in the British theater, because the United States was attacked by Japan, and Roosevelt could not persuade the people to launch a counteroffensive in Britain first, and was indifferent to the Japanese army in the North Pacific. After the main force of the German army was transferred eastward, there was only one air force and 24 German infantry divisions (including four Italian divisions, one Romanian division and one Turkish division) and 2 armored divisions on the British front. The two sides fought a trench war in the British Isles, and they were very happy to fight with cold guns and cold guns, but neither was able to change the status quo, and the British Isles became a forgotten battlefield. It is precisely because of this that the British finally tasted the taste of the local war of resistance from the beginning of the first twenty years. Hess was also generous to others, handing over a large number of cultural relics and British government supplies to the trading companies of the China Standards Group in Toulon and Sicily to repay the Chinese arms and military supplies. In addition to watching a large number of cannonballs exchanged for Victorian gold coins to help the British carry out demolition and demolition, Qiu Fatzi had no choice but to draw funds from the treasury that had almost bottomed out to buy scarce materials in the American market that were speculated by Jewish conglomerates, and this part of the proceeds was used to offset China's debt of "buying" the Jewish ethnic group from the German SS system.

The stability of Germany's eastern front gave Führer Hess the opportunity to sort out the political situation at home, and although the invasion of Moscow did not result in August, China's entry into the war was enough to make the Germans optimistic about the future situation against Russia. Moreover, from the mouth of the new SS national leader, Field Marshal Canaris, he learned that Germany's own "Younas" plan had made a breakthrough, and in the near future, Germany would also have a superweapon capable of changing the entire world pattern, which made the improper Führer Hess even more confident, and he even publicly announced at the national congress of the Workers' Party that the Workers' Party promised to make "every German family have a chicken in a pot, a car in a garage, and every industrious German working family can go on vacation every year". No longer delayed by the war, next year 100,000 German workers will be sent to the German-occupied Russian coastal city of Odessa for a holiday, where well-trained female Red Army prisoners of war will be their attendants.