PS: Happy Valentine's Day to all readers......

The full name of the Central Asian Army Group is the 5th Panzer Army, which was adapted from the Middle East Army Group, and later coordinated with the Turkish troops to form an army group, and Schellner replaced the position of commander of Rommel Army Group, but because the Turkish troops are currently far apart, Schellner actually commands an army group. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

Hoffman had a lot of faith in him, not only better than everyone else, but in a sense even better than Schellner himself - how could the commander of the historical Battle of Courland not be strong if he could lead a group of remnants of the defeated army until May 1945? So he didn't care what tactics Schellner used, it wasn't a question for the Führer to think about, and he wouldn't anyway.

The main forces of the army group were originally located in the center of the triangle surrounded by the cities of Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent. On the eve of the Red Army's offensive in December, a strategic contraction was already underway. In addition to the headquarters organs, relevant guard units, Tiger heavy armored battalions, heavy artillery units and other directly subordinate units, the complete sequence of troops of the group army mainly includes four divisions: the Greater German Division, the 15th Panzer Division, the Prince Eugen Mountain Infantry Division and the 1st Mountain Infantry Division (Edelweiss Division), as well as the German 1st Paratroop Division and the Italian Paratroop Brigade (Note: if the paratroopers are not included, they are specifically called the Central Asian Cluster to distinguish them). Immediately after Schellner took office, the Central Asian cluster was in full swing to gather troops, build fortifications, and hoard supplies to wait for the arrival of the Soviet troops.

In addition to Schellner, Hoffmann was very satisfied with the command of the Central Asian cluster: the commander of the army group was General Hermann-Balk, the former commander of the Großdeutsche Division, who had extensive experience in armored warfare, especially assault offensives; The chief of staff of the army group was Gauss, who was familiar with the whole situation of the group, and was meticulous and meticulous, and Schellner admired it very much after contact, and did not think anything about it because he was Rommel's long-time partner.

Among the division-level commanders, there are also bright stars, and the successor to the commander of the Greater German Division is Lieutenant General Wink, who has distinguished himself in the Battle of Baku - when Hitler asked Vink where he was when the Third Reich fell, it was him, and the 15th Panzer Division was Lieutenant General Walst, who had moved to Africa and made many achievements; Otto Coombe, who was the commander of Prince Eugen's division, was no ordinary man - he had a part of the Nuremberg trials, and this guy managed to escape from Dachau prison until 1995, and only reappeared in 1995, and his cunning was deeply appreciated by Hoffmann - he now became more and more displeased with the old-school and rigid Juncker officers, and sent them to the reserve army to sit on the cold bench at every turn; Only the 1st Mountain Division was slightly more troublesome, the original division commander, Lieutenant General Herbert Lantz, was found out by Hoffmann and sentenced to death, and the division commander was Lieutenant General Walter Rittel-von Granberghofen Stettner, whose command ability was slightly inferior to others, but Schellner himself was a mountain infantryman, so the last piece of the short board was also made up.

In Hoffman's words, such a command group would be perfect if it wanted to attack and attack, to defend and defend, to have armored assault and armored assault, and to have mountain warfare and mountain warfare! He soon learned from front-line intelligence that the Soviet commander was Zhukov himself, believing that it was enough to teach the other side a profound lesson. Didn't Zhukov hit Moder all over his head during the Mars operation?

Beginning in early December, Zhukov launched a fierce offensive led by six newly formed Guards tank brigades allocated by Stalin, with the goal of entrapping or dividing the Central Asian cluster into two, of which 2 tank brigades were all equipped with IS-1 heavy tanks just produced by the Red Army, each brigade had 58 vehicles, and the other 4 brigades were equipped with a production model that had never appeared in history at all - T-43/85, that is, the same 85mm guns as the IS-1 were installed on the basis of the T-43's enhanced defense. A new model of the T-43/85 was formed, which was slightly less maneuverable than the T-34/85 but had increased defense.

On 7 December, the left flank of the Red Army's pincer offensive captured Tashkent and quickly sent cavalry units for flank detours; On the 9th, the right flank of the Red Army's pincer offensive appeared in Samarkand, and the same attempt was made to make a flank detour. Schellner commanded the troops to fight and retreat, and broke through to the predetermined defensive positions. On December 15, under the command of Balk, the armored units of the two divisions of the Greater German Division and the 15th Panzer Division, together with the two Tiger heavy armored battalions under the command of the headquarters, turned around and fought a short assault battle that caught the Soviet army by surprise, and simply ate up more than 20,000 troops and two Guards tank brigades of the Red Army, and their own casualties were worth more than 2,000.

Originally, the victory of the Germans would have come more easily, but to the surprise of the Germans, the newly invested tanks of the Red Army made them struggle a lot.

The IS-1 tank was the best Russian heavy tank they had ever encountered, not as good as the Tiger in terms of defense and attack, but it surpassed it in mobility and was very difficult to fight, and the No. 4s couldn't gnaw at all; And the Red Army's more T-43/85 also caused a lot of trouble for the Germans, not only was the 4th completely suppressed, but the probability of the Tiger being destroyed also increased a lot. Even with the elite tank crews, they can no longer play the exchange ratio of 1:6 and 1:8, and the advantage of short assault is between 1:3 and 1:4. Fortunately, the 1943 Panzer Division was imposing, and the Tiger Heavy Armored Battalion was famous, and the Germans simply killed two elite Guards tank brigades, one with IS-1 and the other with T43/85 - Zhukov lost a third of the Guards given to him by Stalin.

The result of the battle also frightened Zhukov, he did not expect that the troops that were already new tank formations were still vulnerable, and he did not expect that the armored division of the German army in 1943 was so tough, 100,000 troops and 400 tanks not only could not hold these two armored divisions, but were pulled out by people to kill more than 20,000 troops, as if they had been slapped in the face, and it hurt hotly.

On December 23, the German army retreated after the Khuzhan blockade battle, and the Red Army lost more than 30,000 troops and more than 200 tanks, of which nearly 100 were destroyed by the German 88mm anti-aircraft guns in ambush in advance, and at the same time, the Assault tank destroyers equipped with 88mm tank guns also played a huge role, and the German army suffered nearly 5,000 casualties and reduced more than 50 tanks. Now Germany is much more arrogant than in history, not only has the tungsten mine support of the Eastern Province, but also got a large amount of tungsten from Japan (mainly the Chinese side to buy arms from Japan to provide materials), tungsten core armor-piercing shells are open to supply, knowing that the Red Army put in new heavy tanks, the first reaction of all vehicle groups is to increase the proportion of tungsten core armor-piercing shells.

On 31 December, fierce fighting took place at Konibodom, and the Prinz Eugen Mountain Infantry Division and the 1st Mountain Infantry Division took advantage of the special terrain and barriers of the Syr Darya, Tien Shan, and Gisar-Alai Mountains to give the Red Army a vivid moment - four cavalry brigades that were eager to pursue fell into the German ambush circle prepared in advance, lost in front of a dense fire of machine guns and artillery, and the blood of men and horses stained the Syr Darya River red, and then poured into Lake Kailakoom, where it froze a few days later due to the sudden drop in temperature, and looked like a strange red light.

The Red Army thus ended the mobile warfare and ran headlong into the first line of German defense, a strong line of defense intercepted at the mouth of the basin. Looking at this huge basin, Zhukov began to have trouble. This is because the final battle site chosen by the Germans is the Kokand Basin, or Fergana-Valley, an intermountain basin between the Tien Shan and Gisar-Alai Mountains, located on the border of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The basin is a cone-shaped mouth, the wider it is, but the width of the bottle mouth is less than 70 kilometers, and the widest part of the middle is only 170 kilometers, both sides are full of mountains, heavy equipment and tanks can't pass at all, the light infantry still has a chance, but now it is the season of heavy snow and biting cold winds, and he has less than a brigade of ski troops under his command.

What's more troublesome is that the climate of the whole basin is completely different from the outside world because of the cold air flow blocked by the mountains on both sides: the temperature is relatively high, even in the coldest season, the lowest temperature is only minus 5-8 degrees, and the average temperature is usually above zero.

"This matter is troublesome, no wonder the Germans are so emboldened to stay in Central Asia, it turns out that they have found such a place to hide."

"Will our people still be able to infiltrate it?"

"Of course, the small detachment is fine, but the large unit is not."

"Then send a small team to sabotage and cooperate with the main force to fight."

It was a very good idea, but when I asked the following, I realized that it was not so simple, there were nearly 3 million people living in the entire basin, all of whom were of Central Asian race, and there were almost no Russians, and the local independent forces had long been destroyed by the grassroots party organizations and administrative organs, and they had all become independent elements - in other words, the Bolshevik detachment would immediately face a sea of 3 million people! It is difficult to even maintain secrecy and save lives, so how can we talk about cooperating with the large corps and strengthening the effect of our own side?

Now Zhukov had only two options in front of him: first, to force the attack, to exchange life for life, to force the Germans to retreat and advance step by step; Second, monitor and continue to wait, so that the German heavy army corps will collapse without a fight because of the exhaustion of food and other military supplies.

It was not easy to choose either one, but Stalin's telegram urging the troops to be harshly urged had already been sent -- informing the US side of the follow-up opinions on the follow-up handling of the supplies aided to the Soviet Union, and asking him to eat the 100,000 German troops and hundreds of thousands of separatist and rebel forces as soon as possible!

Many times, the sorrow of a soldier is that he always has to fight a war that he does not want to fight......