The timing of the offensive guaranteed by Comrade Zhukov with his head proved to be very reliable, and when the cold snap from the Arctic blew by, and even the warmest Crimean Peninsula felt the biting cold, the roads of the southern flank of the entire Eastern Front were firmly frozen. All signs point to the arrival of the winter of 1942, the arrival of reinforcements from the Russians, General Winter.

Looking at the goose feather snow falling from the sky, the soldiers of the Red Army cheered, and from officers to soldiers, they felt that their combat effectiveness had risen to a higher level. Of course, the Germans also made full preparations this year, General Schmund tried his best to change the front-line troops with winter equipment, in order to facilitate and facilitate transportation, not only all the train wagons were lined up in long lines to send supplies to the eastern front, but all the ships that could be drawn from Germany were sent out for North Sea transportation - anyway, under the British and American naval blockade, they could not run ocean transportation, and the German Navy's cruisers and destroyers were used for escort missions. Fortunately, the Russians' naval strength was extremely poor, and during the two-month sea trip, except for four ships that collided due to careless handling, the rest of the freighters suffered almost no losses.

Looking at the ships of different sizes, sizes, and speeds, Schmund still admired the Führer's vision: he asked the warship designers to quickly design a general-purpose 10,000-ton transport ship, which could carry up to 9,900 tons of cargo and the internal dimensions were tailor-made for the Tiger tank, just enough to easily accommodate the new tank transfer - although there was not yet a Tiger on the Eastern Front, because all the Tigers had been sent to the North African desert to support Guderian. But Schunt believes the Tiger will definitely be able to equip the Eastern Front on a large scale next year. This large-scale replica of the ship is said to have been developed to compete with the American concept of the Liberty Wheel, which the Führer himself named the "Will Wheel", and they made extensive use of prefabricated parts, assembly work, and welding processes. The speed of construction has been greatly increased, far faster than the previous riveting of cargo ships, but the price is less than half of what it used to be, and the durability may be a little worse, but it should be enough to hold on until the end of the war. But the Americans seem to be on a higher level, taking 98 days to build a free wheel, compared to 127 days for the German wheel. If it were to be manufactured by an Italian shipyard, it would take about 230 days. Minister Speer was aware of this problem, after Mussolini agreed to the integration of German and Italian military production. A large number of German workers, technicians, and engineers rushed to the Italian factories to help the lazy Italian scum improve their production efficiency and technical level. As for the objections of the comfortable working class. The Roman hierarchy should not have heard it.

Except for the Italians. Romania, Finland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and all other countries with shipbuilding capabilities are also allowed to build such ships, the only requirement is that no changes to the design are allowed, all parts must be interchangeable with the German side, and their overall estimated construction time is similar to that of the Italians. But even so, everyone was happy, because it meant that a large number of cheap ships would be available in the future, and the only person in Germany who was unhappy was probably the commander of the Navy's submarine forces, Dönitz, who, after inspecting the construction site, threw down the words: "My boys are finished, they will never ......be at peace."

Schmunt's efforts over the past two months have been watched by all. In addition to munitions and ammunition, he sent millions of antifreeze, antifreeze gasoline additives, winter clothes, gloves, hats with ear protection, high-calorie chocolate and fast-food trucks using self-heating agents to the front lines. Let the front-line soldiers in the ice and snow feel the warmth of the Führer from the bottom of their hearts, and there will never be a story of last winter's defeat because of the sudden cold - although the Soviets thought that 1941 was actually a warm winter, but the warmest winter was minus 30 degrees...... The only fly in the ointment is that those hats with ear protectors that were hurriedly made by women from all over Europe look too close to the style of the Russians, and if a red star is embedded in the middle of the brim, it is a fake Red Army cap, so the soldiers used a lot of methods to solve the identification problem, and the most effective way is to draw a gourd and embed an iron cross logo, the advantage is that the Red Army caps captured by the soldiers can be used directly after replacing the cockade.

Zhukov's offensive was well timed, and it happened that when Manstein was using mobile forces to knock on the Red Army lines in the Voronezh in the north and the Kalmyk steppes in the south, he used 2 tank armies (1st and 4th tank armies), 1 guards army (1st Guards Army), 11 other army groups (12th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 37th, 51st, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 65th, 66th armies), and a huge offensive codenamed "Uranus" began. In order to support this counteroffensive, Comrade Stalin also spent a lot of money, not only did he drain the mobile forces of the three fronts (Don Front, Southwestern Front, and Stalingrad Front) from the entire southern front, but also desperately mobilized nearly 900,000 troops and 1,000 tanks to press the Germans, and if it was not enough, another 300,000 troops drawn from the Far East and Siberia could also provide a strong backing for Zhukov.

Stalin's only demands for this counteroffensive were to take Rostov as soon as possible, to divide the German cluster in the Caucasus (to be annihilated in the next phase of the campaign), to raze the lair of the Russian Liberation Army, and, if possible, to capture Vlasov as a traitor and bring him to Moscow, where he would hang him in front of all the Red Army generals - so that Comrade Zhukov would receive an Order of the Red Banner.

In terms of the comparison of forces on the southern flank of the entire Eastern Front, the Red Army has a great advantage: although the German Army Group South has concentrated nearly half of the forces of the Eastern Front, if the necessary forces of other defensive lines such as Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula are excluded, there will still be about 1.3 million troops directly used for front-line operations (in addition, there are about 200,000 Axis Little Brother troops to cooperate in the operation, mainly Italians and Romanians, and the Hungarians have been arranged to go to Army Group Center, so as not to pinch the Romanians again), Distributed on a front of about 2,400 kilometers from Borkhov in the north to the Caucasus in the south, the Soviet army facing it has six heavy army groups, including the Bryansk, Voronezh Front, Southwestern Front, Don Front, Stalingrad Front, and Caucasian Front, with a total of about 2.6 million troops, even excluding the number of defense troops in depth, the front-line combat strength is as high as 2.2 million, much higher than that of Army Group South.

The Red Army still has a certain advantage in terms of equipment and technical weapons, but it is not so obvious in numbers: the number of tanks on both sides is 1,800 versus 2,500 (of which 1,500 are on the German side itself, and another 300 belong to the Axis Allies), but only about 1,800 of the Red Army's 2,500 tanks are T-34 or equivalent (including the KV series, the old Sherman aided by the Americans, Valentine aided by the British, etc.), and the rest are outdated goods such as T-26 and T-70, The No. 3 tank under Manstein accounted for 40%, the old No. 4 accounted for 20%, the No. 4G with a long body and a front armor thickness of 80 mm has reached the level of 40%, and the tanks of the Axis Allies are a little worse, except for a small number of No. 4, the majority are generally No. 3, and some are 38T, given by the German army, taking into account the difference in tank performance and quantity, the armored strength is slightly superior to the Red Army, but the overall tends to be balanced.

There is a large gap in the number of artillery pieces between the two sides, the Red Army, which has always adhered to the doctrine of artillery, has a large advantage, the German army has 17,000 artillery pieces of various calibers, while the number of Soviet troops has exceeded 30,000 guns, the only gratifying thing is that the number of the two sides is basically equal in the field of medium and heavy artillery above 75mm caliber, and when it comes to the quality of artillery, both the products manufactured by Krupp and the Skoda Arsenal are slightly superior. The only advantage of the German army was the air force, and the number of combat aircraft on both sides was about 1,600 to 1,300, and the German aircraft had a large advantage in performance.

This comparison of equipment and strength was the result of Hoffman's best efforts, on the one hand, because he quickly stopped the offensive operations after September, and the losses on both the Caucasus Blue Plan and the Stalingrad Front were very small; On the other hand, it is because the scale of production has continued to rise rapidly after being transferred to the general mobilization system in advance, and the equipment replenishment has been increased. Throughout September and October, all the No. 2 tanks and 38Ts on the Eastern Front were cleared and replaced with the latest No. 4G, of which the No. 2 tank was changed to an anti-aircraft vehicle, and the 38T was given to the Axis brothers as a reward (many people think so, they don't know that these countries have provided a lot of logistics and grain), and the T-34 tanks handed in by the various army groups have also been replaced with No. 4G. The commanders of the various army groups were very satisfied with this, which meant that the armored forces had increased their combat strength by at least 30 percent under the premise of not being established, and even better, there was almost no need to chase additional fuel and supplies.

The generals of the Eastern Front were very grateful to Speer, because the results of the two-month production adjustment were so great that if they could really follow this pace, it would not be a pipe dream to complete the refitting of all No. 3 tanks by the end of the year -- all the staff officers of the High Command and the Army General Staff were glad that they had not taken the bet on the reorganization of tank production, otherwise hundreds of officers above the rank of major general would now have to give Speer to stand guard, and it would have been the turn of 1945 for one person and one week. (To be continued.) )