After receiving an affirmative reply, Zeitzler finally returned to Berlin with some peace of mind, and he still had to worry about the Second Battle of Britain. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info He believes that the situation in the Caucasus can be maintained by Manstein, and even if the Thor's hammer army cannot complete the redress, he thinks it doesn't matter, half of the strength is enough for the Soviets. His old friend Schmund told him that the entire SS Panzer Assault Army involved more than 3,500 tanks and tanks, which exceeded the total number of tanks the Germans had at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa three years ago.

Zeitzler agrees, and the two shortcomings are not a big deal in his opinion. Whether it is expensive or not depends on the result, being able to win the battle is the last word, and it is cheap enough to build a bunch of No. 3s, what if they are all eaten by the IS-1 and T-43/85 on the opposite side? As for logistics, as long as you know how to look at the map, you can understand that as long as the Black Sea transportation line continues, plus the railway line, the Caucasus line is the strongest place in the logistics supply capacity of the entire Soviet-German battlefield, compared with the central battlefield of a large area of no man's land, the logistics support does not know how many times better, perhaps this is also the reason why Manstein tried his best to persuade the Führer to let the Russians in to fight, and persuaded to leave Thor's hammer in the Caucasus, right?

As soon as he thought of this, he was completely relieved, and he did not pay attention to the urging of the Turks, but sharply reprimanded the other party for its incompetence: 200,000 troops, two natural defense lines in the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains, and the Luftwaffe to provide cover, actually collapsed in just 10 days. Not only did Transcaucasia lose cleanly, but it also allowed people to invade their own territory - until now, the Axis countries have not been occupied by the Allies, and Turkey is the first, and it is simply the laughing stock of the whole Axis camp! In the past, it was said that Italy had poor combat effectiveness, and the British ridiculed the Americans for calling each other "Italians on our side", but now they have to replace it with "Turks on our side". Look at how the Iranians defend themselves? Did the Russians get in?

The Turks were also full of helplessness when they listened to some words, and they did not know how they had collapsed, as if they had been beaten all at once. The Germans had promised to send troops to rescue their own side in 2-3 weeks, but within 2 weeks they had completely collapsed, and if the Germans hadn't moved fast enough to block the passes in the Caucasus Mountains, they might have been swept away by the Red Army all at once. Now there is a lot of noise in Turkey, and the whole country is filling in the northeast direction, but everyone is not confident that they can stop the Russians. In fact, if Chernyakhovsky wants to attack Turkey, Istanbul and Ankara can't fight, and it's no problem to fight Erzurum. But the Central Asian cluster has important tasks, how can it waste time and energy on the Turks?

He could only beg the Germans to continue to help, which Zeitzler said was a matter of course, but more importantly, Turkey was now guarding its line and must not let the Russians enter again. In addition, Zeitzler said that based on the current situation, if Transcaucasia is recovered in the future, it will definitely not be occupied by the Turks alone, as before, otherwise the Russian Liberation Army, which will contribute to the situation, will also have opinions, as well as the independent state of the Transcaucasian nation promised at the beginning. The Turkish side was quite helpless about this, but the situation deteriorated so much that they could not afford to bargain, so they could only accept it, intending to grab more territory when the Red Army retreated.

However, neither Zeitzler nor Manstein expected that while they were rejoicing in the Führer's Thor's hammer, Comrade Stalin was also applauding the progress of the Central Asian Special Front, and gritted his teeth and came up with new equipment -- four Guards tank brigades (56 vehicles per brigade) equipped with the latest IS-2 tanks rushed to the aid of Chernyakhovsky at his behancy, ready to have a good battle with the German Tiger heavy armored battalion.

In the design system of the Soviet defense forces, the second half of 1943 was a turning point in the major adjustment of equipment thinking, and the Soviet side had been pursuing numerical superiority, emphasizing the use of numbers to drown the German army, and even did not hesitate to adopt methods such as simplifying the process and reducing the intact rate of equipment to forcibly increase the quantity. However, after losing a large amount of equipment due to the loss of the Baku oil field, the Volga industrial zone, and successive defeats in the battles of spring awakening, castle, and summer thunder, the depletion of soldiers, the shortage of combat and technical troops, the shortage of materials and raw materials, and the sharp reduction of production capacity have all brought the original number of sea ideas into a dead end.

The remaining resources could no longer support the production of more than 2,000 tanks per month - there was neither enough steel to produce nor enough fuel to use. Zhukov's initial prediction was soon confirmed, and due to the emphasis on the use of all oil for industry and the army, in the cold winter of 1943, there was almost no fuel supply for the people to heat, and the already insufficient coal and food eventually led to a significant reduction in the population, not in the tens of thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands!

Winter passed easily, but the shortage of resources was not easy, and the cruel reality forced the Soviet side to change course and begin to pursue quality advantages. The monthly production of tanks has dropped from more than 2,500 to less than 1,000, but the performance has been greatly improved. The production of 4-engine and 2-engine bombers, which consumed resources, was discontinued, and efforts were concentrated on the production of single-engine fighters.

In terms of models, the aging T-34/76 was gradually replaced by the T-43/85, and the cutting-edge IS-1 and IS-2 tanks also began to be produced. As for the reduced armoured combat capability, emphasis was placed on improving the anti-tank capabilities of ordinary infantry, which relied on the three treasures of the Red Army - the Molotov cocktail bottle, the anti-tank magnetic grenade, and the Soviet copycat version of the bazooka.

Later, due to fuel shortages, Molotov's cocktail bottles were gone; German tanks were generally coated with diamagnetic coatings, and grenades were of little use, but the Soviet bazooka became popular, and its resounding name could not even sit on the laurel of Hoffmann in Berlin - the Soviets copied the bazooka called the RPG. At the end of 1943, the RPG-1 was launched, and at the beginning of 1944, there was an RPG-2, but fortunately, German experts did a test, and I don't know whether the Soviet imitation level was not up to par or there was a problem with the production technology, and both RPGs were inferior to the same products of the German army. But even if it was inferior to the German product, it was still more than enough to deal with No. 4 or other armored vehicles.

Fortunately, the Soviet RPG came out late, and the Soviet-German war was mainly carried out in the vast plains of the central battlefield after the autumn of 1943, and the RPG was not too useful.

The Germans made an urgent adjustment to this, and adopted a new strategy after gaining the upper hand in both the quantity and quality of their own armored forces: on the one hand, they did not equip the Eastern Front with new infantry anti-tank weapons to prevent them from being captured and used by the Russians; On the other hand, the troops were repeatedly ordered to never allow tanks to fight street battles! Even so, there are hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles of various types that have fallen under RPGs, and although many of them can still be repaired, they are not big or small hidden dangers after all.

The Soviet side also did not think that RPG alone could change the passive situation, they still wanted to bet on heavy tanks, and the People's Commissariat of the Tank Industry put forward a request to the SKB-2 Design Bureau to quickly complete the IS tank, and the IS-1 \2 two models were designed and developed at the same time. The IS-1 was finalized earlier, and although it was slightly inferior in performance to the Tiger tank, it was better than the fast progress, and the Soviet Union, eager to reverse the passive situation, still put it into production; In order to make concessions to the production of the IS-1, Voroshilov personally ordered the IS-2 to wait a few more months to improve the design first, so as to make the latter more mature.

The IS-2 prototype completed at the end of January 1944 was slightly different from the historical IS-2 due to the impact of the Tiger tank (both the early and late models), and the thickness of the upper armor was 120mm/60 degrees, which exceeded the level of 100mm/50 degrees of the German Tiger; The gun is a 122mm/L43 howitzer, which also surpasses the Tiger's 88mm/L56; At 45.5 tonnes, it is 2.5 tonnes lighter than the Tiger, but because the engine is more than 100 hp less than the HL230+ used in the Tiger, the Tiger's maneuverability is still better.

The chassis of the IS-1 and the IS-2 are basically the same, but the artillery and armor are weaker than the IS-2, but the mobility is better than the IS-2, and the overall combat effectiveness is inferior to the IS-2 in the eyes of the Soviet side, so Comrade Stalin generously sent the sample car of the IS-1 and a full set of technical data to the United States, and the more advanced IS-2 they obviously refused to take it out.

Now, the Red Army, which did not know the existence of the Tiger 2, was finally glad that it had a heavy tank that could overwhelm the Tiger, according to the designers: at a distance of 1500-2000 meters, the IS-2 could destroy the Tiger first without caring about the opponent; At a distance of 1000-1500 meters, the IS-2 and the Tiger can basically ensure mutual destruction, but the IS-2 with thicker armor will have a greater probability of survival; At a distance of less than 1,000 meters, it is not recommended to fight against the Tiger unless necessary, because the 122mm tank gun uses split ammunition and has a low firing frequency, which may be pressed by the Tiger with tungsten core armor-piercing shells.

Stalin expressed his deep satisfaction after seeing this, and instructed that the US-aided armor steel should be properly utilized, and that priority should be given to the production of the IS-2, at least 200 units per month, hoping to raise it to more than 400 units in the near future, and that the more powerful and 50-ton IS-3 should be designed and finalized so that it could be put into service in the autumn of this year.

Having just been promoted to general, awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and received the latest support, Chernyakhovsky constantly ordered troops and launched small forces to attack the weak links of the search axis, and was ready to sweep the Caucasus Plain in one fell swoop......