Rommel knew this very well and knew that he did not play much of a role in this matter, and that the key was the determination of the Führer, and of course it could not be said that it was completely irrelevant -- he submitted to the Supreme High Command a report on the combat effectiveness of the Iranian army, and through the observation of the battles in the past few days, he spoke highly of the Iranian army, which was not afraid of death, and believed that its combat effectiveness and fighting will were much stronger than those of the Italians, and that it was worth cultivating.

The High Command had a secret system of assessment of the Axis armies, and the idea was originally proposed by Hoffman - before the crossing he was a member of the expert group for the Game of Iron Ambition. Originally, it was only a rough evaluation criterion, but in the Supreme Command, which has strict logical thinking and likes to be sophisticated in everything, after analyzing and interpreting the cases of previous engagements, this evaluation system has become a whole set of huge and complicated things, and under the premise that the standard combat equipment is the same, the average level of the Italian Army is the benchmark score of the Axis Army - 50 points. Croats, Egyptians, and Iraqis are assessed at 75 points, Slovaks, Romanians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians at 80 points, Hungarians and the Baltic States with 90 points, Finns and the Russian Liberation Army with 100 points, and Germany with 150 points. Rommel gave the Iranians a score of 85, considering it somewhere between the Romanians and the Hungarians.

It is said that the Italians will soon be expected to get out of the bottom of the table, as the Spaniards have come - Berlin has only set the Spaniards with 45 points. The only thing that makes it difficult for the Supreme Command to grasp is the Japanese Army, which can score 120 points from the point of view of its will to fight and its basic individual combat capability, and only 75 points at most from the perspective of mastering mechanized and modern warfare.

This quantitative evaluation system is also applicable to the assessment of the combat effectiveness of the Allied forces, the Supreme Command has set a score of 90 for the British Native Army, and the evaluation of the British colonial army is much more complicated, with the Indian Army alone having three standard scores: pure Indian soldiers, commanded by a small number of senior British officers, 55 points; a large number of British middle and high-ranking officers, 70 points; 110 points, including a large number of Gurgle soldiers and a large number of mid- and high-ranking British officers—higher than the Home Army. The ANZ team both scored 120 points, while the South African team scored only 75 points; The average unit of the Soviet Red Army was 85 points, and the Guards unit could get 115 points. Since he had not yet fought the U.S. Army and had few previous battles, Yodel gave the U.S. Army a tentative 90 points.

In addition to the benchmark score, a variety of score bonuses were introduced into the game game, which was dizzying: for example, Romanian and Hungarian troops could get a command bonus of 20% if a large number of German officers were involved and commanded, American troops had a logistics bonus of 20%, the Red Guards and Waffen-SS had a conscious-form bonus of 10%, and so on.

Rommel was still a little skeptical about this gradually improving system, and deliberately made an assessment of the Iranian campaign. He sent Berlin all the strength of the enemy, the approximate level of equipment, the tactics adopted, and the course of the battle, but did not tell them the final result and the casualty ratio, and the results simulated by the Supreme High Command shocked him: the Red Army killed and wounded 39,000 prisoners, and the total number of casualties of Rommel's troops was about 5,000. The actual battle statistics showed that the Red Army had 43,000 killed, wounded and captured, and the Germans had more than 3,700 casualties, a large part of the difference due to the fact that Rommel was supported by some Iranian forces.

Rommel was very interested in this, and he was eager to make another assessment of the upcoming Battle of Tabriz after the introduction of Iranian troops: at the end of January, the 150,000-strong Persian Red Army was facing off against the German Middle East Army, which was less than 100,000, and just over half a month later, the situation had become that the Persian Army of the Red Army, which was in its early 100,000s, was going to face off against the German-Iranian coalition forces, which was about to reach out to nearly 150,000 German-Iranian forces.

When the news of the loss of Tehran by the Persian army group reached Moscow, and the news that Iran had joined the Axis camp and declared war on itself, Stalin was extremely angry and almost wanted to take Mezov directly and send him to the Gulag, but it was Zhukov and Vasilevsky who joined forces to dissuade him, and the two believed that from a purely military point of view, it was impossible to hold both Tabriz and Tehran, and also maintain a fragile supply line without air supremacy, and that Mezhov was responsible but not the largest.

Although Stalin spared Mezzov, he was overwhelmed by his concern for the situation in Persia, and ordered that the Persian army group must hold Tabriz and not take a step back—and then the Transcaucasian and Baku oil fields would be further back. The General Staff of the Red Army also highly recognized this, and Zhukov and Vasilevsky ran to the Caucasian Front together, demanding that the commander of the Front, Tylenev, in any case, send elite troops to strengthen the Persian Army Group.

Tyulenev was also bitter about this, although the Caucasus Army had a clear advantage over the German army in terms of strength, the transportation conditions from Transcaucasia to northern Persia were not ideal, and even to Tabriz, where the distance had been greatly reduced, it was still very difficult to maintain a supply line of more than 200,000 troops. Not to mention that after Iran explicitly declared war on the Soviet Union, guerrillas were active in many places, including Tabriz, against the Red Army, and the limited number of troops had to be engaged in law and order warfare, which was even more frustrating.

"Comrade Tyulenev, Comrade Stalin is aware of the difficulties you are facing, so we have brought reinforcements, in addition to the 3 fighter flight regiments, there are also members of the base camp reserve - the most elite 11th Guards Separate Heavy Tank Brigade." Zhukov's expression was serious, "They are all equipped with the latest KV-3 tanks, the number of which is as high as 60, and I hope that under your command I can effectively curb the arrogance of the enemy's Tiger heavy armored battalion." ”

There is a sentence that Zhukov did not say: he believed that under the current situation, Tabriz would probably not be able to hold it, and the Red Army must shorten the front as soon as possible and prepare to defend Transcaucasia, but Stalin did not listen to this now, and he and Vasilevsky did not dare to preach it, for fear of being labeled capitulationist and conservative. Due to the successive setbacks in the recent military operations of Britain and the United States, Stalin was eager to fight a few good battles to improve his position among the allies. So Zhukov could only comply with the wishes of the Guards and play the trump card of the 11th Guards Independent Heavy Tank Brigade, and he hinted that if Tyulenev could defeat the Tiger heavy armored battalion, even if Tabriz was lost, he believed that there would be a decent explanation for Comrade Stalin, and it was really not good, and the General Staff would help him speak.

Tyulenev understood the subtext behind the subtle words of the two, and was moved to tears, and expressed his gratitude again and again.

The KV-3 tank is not a historical product, but an emergency product of the Soviet Union's response to the Tiger tank crisis under the crossing effect, and was developed on the basis of the development of the KV-13 tank, due to the T-34's inability to face the Tiger tank, coupled with the slow progress of the T-34/85 program, under the strict orders of Stalin and Voroshilov, the Red Army combined the KV-13 and T-43 project team members together, trying to concentrate forces, Combine the agility of the T-34 tank with the heavy defense of the KV series to create a new tank.

The KV-3 tank weighed about 37 tons, prepared an 85mm tank main gun, had a maximum armor thickness of 120mm in the front of the hull, and a 105mm turret, used a 600-horsepower V-2K engine, and could reach a maximum speed of 46 km / h, but the crew was still 4 people. Since it was an urgently developed product, it was too late to design a new chassis, and the KV-3 was upgraded based on the T-34 tank chassis, including tracks, load wheels and other components were taken from the KV series. The tank had an improved cooling device, which worked well for increasing air intake, and the steering mechanism used a "two-stage planetary steering machine" designed by A.I. Baragnaravov. On the premise of maintaining the inheritance of the general structure, many details have been innovated and improved.

Soviet designers carefully studied the Tiger tank and related combat cases, and considered that the mobility of the Tiger was slightly inferior, so the KV-3 was improved in a targeted manner. On the whole, the KV-3 can be regarded as a product of the heavy medium tank, although the Soviet Union's technological capacity and mechanical manufacturing level are not as good as the British and American, but its design concept and ideas are much better than the latter, and the short-term emergency product KV-3 is far stronger than the new Comet tank made by the British.

In addition to the KV-3, an emergency solution, the Red Army has prepared a real heavy tank solution, the 45-ton IS-1, although the latter has been developed at a relatively slow pace and is unlikely to enter service until at least this fall. In fact, the problem of unreliable mechanical properties of the KV-3 in a hurry was also common, but Stalin really couldn't wait, he couldn't watch the Tiger become the overwhelming protagonist on the battlefield, and the new tank had to be immediately accepted for real combat since it was successfully built.

Originally, Stalin considered putting it on the Don battlefield in the direction of Rostov-on-Don, but intelligence showed that Manstein had at least 4 heavy armored battalions in his hands, and the German anti-tank fire and aerial fire were quite intensive, Zhukov considered it again and again, and believed that the new equipment could not be rashly put into such a serious battlefield, in view of the fact that the German army in the Iranian direction had only one Tiger heavy armored battalion, he strongly advised the 11th Brigade of the Guards Independent Heavy Tank, which had been strengthened and equipped with 60 brand-new KV-3 tanks, to invest in the Tabriz defense line, and strive to make a good start. At the same time, it was also possible to curb the momentum of the German offensive in the Iranian direction. Stalin, having considered it, accepted this proposal.

It's a pity that Zhukov never dreamed that on February 18, Rommel got the new 508 heavy armored battalion, and now there are not one but two heavy armored battalions in the hands of the Middle East army. (To be continued.) )