Sauken never imagined that the phrase "falling into the pit" would be applicable not only to the upcoming offensive of the Brazilian army, but also to the Red Army, which had already launched a counteroffensive on the Caucasus plain. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

On May 10, the Red Army, at great sacrifices, broke through the passes of the Caucasus. The next day, the main forces of the Red Army, led by Chernyakhovsky, rushed north from the Kuba line, which, together with part of the troops crossing the Caspian Sea, repelled the enemy forces in front of them.

Two days later, the Red Army occupied Grozny, and more than 200,000 Red Army troops fanned out to pursue the Axis Army in front of them.

On 16 May, Comrade Stalin delivered an impassioned speech in Moscow, defining the offensive as a "Soviet counterattack", in which all the main forces of the three armies on the southern flank, with the exception of the Central Asian Special Front, began to move. General Yeremenko, commander of the Stalingrad Front, who was responsible for defending the left flank of Stalingrad and holding the line from Stalingrad to Astrakhan, acted the fastest, and directly sent two army groups south to rush to attack to cooperate with Chernyakhovsky's offensive, but General Vatutin's Southwestern Front and General Rokossovsky's Don Front only sent 1-2 armies to carry out a diversionary attack because they were concerned about the superiority of the German army.

Stalin was very dissatisfied with this, but for the time being he could not do anything with Vatutin and Rokossovsky, and he knew in his heart that the reason why Yeremenko acted so quickly was not because he was not risky in military judgment, but because he had always shown political speculation -- slogans shook the sky and his chest beat loudly, but he just couldn't get things done. Of course, Yeremenko is still a little cunning, and he didn't suffer anything in the Don series of battles, so he can't be taken out.

However, both Zhukov and Vasilevsky believe that there is a premise for Yeremenko's so-so performance in the fight, and he fought with Malinovsky and Chuikov, and now these two people have formed an independent army group (implicit commander of the reserve front), and the other is blocking the Scherna cluster in Central Asia, so both of them warned Yeremenko's reckless behavior and told him not to be so impulsive.

However, the development of the situation greatly exceeded Zhukov and Vasilevsky's expectations, and the Klestrian Front, which was confronted by Yeremenko's headquarters, actually began to retreat, running out more than 150 kilometers in one go, directly ceding the entire northern part of the Caucasian steppe. Then Yeremenko commanded the troops to march forward, and it was his troops who controlled the largest area.

The disgruntled Yeremenko made a small report to Moscow, suggesting that Zhukov and Vasilevsky suppressed themselves, and Stalin himself was in his heart, so he was naturally dissatisfied with such a conservative style, but he knew that Zhukov had been working very hard and it was not easy to fight, so he did not go to Zhukov for trouble, but reprimanded Vasilevsky and told him to "change his concept and grasp the counteroffensive."

Knowing that the wind in Moscow had changed drastically, Rokossovsky immediately sent two armies to attack, and by May 20, the Red Army had occupied half of the Caucasian steppe, and even overwhelmed the Volgodontsk line, which was only more than 200 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don.

Stalin was very pleased with this situation, and he did not care about Rokossovsky's wait-and-see posture at the beginning, but stopped in front of the map with great interest, and after looking at it again and again, he asked Vasilevsky: "If we can take Rostov-on-Don, can we lock up the Germans in the Caucasus?" ”

"In theory, it is so, but in practice there are a lot of difficulties."

"If there is any difficulty, you can tell me."

"First, the Germans had another outlet in the Caucasus, that is, to cross the sea through the Kerch Peninsula to the Crimean Peninsula; Second, there were too many German troops in the Caucasus, Kleist's Caspian Army Group had about 500,000 troops, and there were more than 200,000 puppet troops and other servant armies in the battle; Thirdly, the Rostov front will definitely face a strong onslaught from the Germans, with the Panzer Army of the Hort cluster to the north; Fourth, Rostov-on-Don was the location of the headquarters of the German Army Group South, with its back to the sea, which was difficult to capture; Fifth, the German army has sea supremacy, and they can use the navy to calmly deploy troops in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea......"

"What do you mean, Rostov doesn't have to fight? Hit it for nothing? ”

Hearing the obvious displeasure in Stalin's tone, Vasilevsky sighed and put it another way: "It's not that you don't fight, but you can't fight too much." We can start with a small goal: try to concentrate 100 or even a little more troops in the Caucasus and eat 20-250,000 German troops. In order to achieve this, we must not fight too fast, but advance slowly, drive a part of the German army to retreat either through the Rostov direction or through the direction of the Kerch Peninsula, and wait until there are still about 300,000 men left in the closed encirclement. ”

Stalin was full of joy and wanted to eat all the 600,000-700,000 Axis troops, but when he heard Vasilevsky say this, his heart suddenly became half cold -- the meaning of eating a German army group is completely different from inflicting heavy damage on an army group.

"Another point that should not be overlooked is that the Germans continued to launch an onslaught on the central front, our troops could no longer resist, and the comrades even found the SS American division ...... in the offensive sequence"

"Wait, those two American divisions that surrendered on Cape Verde?"

"Mainly this group of troops, but also American soldiers who were captured by the Germans in the African campaign."

"Well, Roosevelt's own troops didn't take care of it, but came to fight us." Stalin said, "Fight back hard, especially with a focus on this American lackey force." ”

Vasilevsky smiled bitterly: "But the combat effectiveness of the American soldiers does not seem to be weak, the equipment and materials are sufficient, I don't know if they have been brainwashed or what, in short, they are not afraid of death!" ”

"It's really, it's really!"

Listening to Vasilevsky talk about the central front, Stalin was silent: in order to increase the strength of Central Asia and the southern flank, he constantly transferred troops from the central front, and up to now, the vanguard of the German army has stormed the line of Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, and in more than a month, if the situation of the war has not been fundamentally reversed, the entire central passage will be closed by the German army, and at that time, although the north and south lines of the Soviet Union are still connected in depth, the actual transportation channel will be broken, Do you still expect that broken place in Central Asia to continuously import equipment and supplies for the southern flank? Sooner or later, the rough road will kill people.

A similar situation existed on the northern front, and the two fronts in the north and south had to base themselves on their own industry and agriculture to meet the needs of the war, which was obviously a little too difficult for the Red Army, which had concentrated more than 3 million troops.

Now the German army and the Red Army are like "tightening each other's strength" in Go, and whoever can't hold it back will lose.

However, Hoffman is not afraid that Stalin will be more angry with him, not to mention that he still has the big killer weapon of Thor's hammer, even if the 60-700,000 troops in the Caucasus are really surrounded by the Red Army, he is not afraid, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea can send enough supplies and provisions, if you want to solve the 60-700,000 army, the Red Army is not ready to 2 million casualties and don't think about it. It was uncomfortable for the Germans to lose this number, but it was not so painful that if the Red Army lost another 2 million, he did not know where Stalin could scavenge troops to resist him.

Historically, by the time of the Normandy landings, Germany's permanent losses on the Eastern Front had exceeded 3 million (killed, missing, captured and irreparably wounded), and now the number is only a little more than 1 million, and even most of the captured personnel have been brought back, so there is a large surplus of reservists, which not only gives Hoffman the spare strength to fire in South America, Africa, and the Middle East, but also has the ability to withstand a relatively major defeat.

Of course, with his original intention, he didn't even want to sacrifice the 500,000, so Manstein's order to Kleist was very clear, to shrink quickly and fight on the inside.

In the end, Stalin did not get along with Vasilevsky, but only ordered: "I hope to achieve a victory in a short time, and then we will have the capital for the next battle, so I don't care about 250,000 or 500,000, but the key thing is that I want a victory, a major victory!" ”

"Yes, Comrade Stalin, we will do our best!"

On May 22, the Red Army occupied Maikop on the southern route and Elista on the northern route, and at present the Red Army occupied more than half of the Caucasus region, but what worried both Vasilevsky and Zhukov was that although the German army's controlled defense zone was gradually shrinking, there was no sign or intention of the German army to begin to withdraw from the Caucasus, but resistance and short assaults became more frequent and more intense.

What is even more troublesome is that although they have achieved great results on the map in the past 20 days or so, they have achieved very little success, and most of the German troops can only talk about "repulsion" -- if the Germans do not take the initiative to retreat, they have not captured a few prisoners, but the losses of their own side are not small.

Chernyakhovsky's attack has been wearing out, and the casualties after advancing into the Transcaucasia have exceeded 100,000, and Zhukov has replenished his forces twice in a row; The casualties of Chuikov in the gagged mouth also exceeded 30,000 one after another, forcing Zhukov to give him another army, while the strength of the Schellner troops in the basin did not decrease much, because the Iranian side of the German army was replenished with more than 5,000 men. After the transfer of the Airborne Division to the Arabian Peninsula, the German army in Iran had dropped to just over 50,000, but even so, the more than 70,000 troops left to withstand the Chernyakhovsky offensive group were still more than enough.

The Turks finally restocked more than 200,000 troops on the northeastern border after intensive mobilization, but in the face of the Red Army, which was only a little more than a third of them, the Turks only had the idea of defending, and had no idea of taking the initiative -- they waited for the Germans to repel the Red Army before rushing out to take advantage, and now that they heard that the Germans were retreating step by step in the Caucasus, they did not dare to fight this idea.

On May 23, Guderian arrived in Rostov and reported to Marshal Manstein.

The first thing he said when he arrived was: "The Quake Army is ready and ready to carry out the mission!" ”

Manstein nodded, and brought Guderian to the map: "This is the ...... I will consider your main attack."

ps: I can't stand it today, I can only watch two more, thank you for your support......