As the anticipation of the Red Army's rescue of Tambov was delayed, and instead of the Central Front's attack on Karachi, the disagreement among the commanders of the front immediately became a disagreement in the command. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

Moder leaned to Schmidt's opinion that now that the entire central front had begun to move forward, and that there was a significant salient in the Tambov direction, the tip of which was Tambov, and that once the Red Army in the encirclement was eaten, Army Group Center would be able to quickly form a superior force, and whether it continued to attack the steppe military district, the direction of Moscow to the north, or the direction of Stalingrad to the south, he believed that his side had the complete initiative.

Zeitzler leaned towards Reinhardt's opinion, believing that the significance of the Panzer Army was not to attack the city, nor was it enough to give full play to the superiority in the siege, and that at present there were only 10 infantry divisions in addition to the eight Panzer Divisions in the two Panzer Armies, and that four of them were very valuable Panzergrenadier Divisions -- now the Panzergrenadier Divisions were smaller than the Panzer Divisions, and there were only 6 pure infantry divisions, which did not have a significant advantage over the defenders in the city, and the losses of a forced attack would certainly be very large.

In his opinion, having transferred Army Group East to take over the siege mission, Moder's goal could also be accomplished, albeit with a slight delay of a few days. The most important task of the armored forces at present is to attack the flanks of the Central Front in the south - to try to eat the 150,000 mobile forces and thus cut off the rear of Baghramyan. Although he was more confident in the Italian forces in Karachi, what if there was a big hole? In his eyes, the Bryansk Front in the Tambov encirclement was already a turtle in the urn, and he hoped to adjust the goal and eat the Central Front as well. In the case that the gap between the north and south wings cannot be opened, it is also ideal to bloom in the center first.

These two propositions made Hoffman hesitate: on the one hand, he agreed with the opinion that the Panzer Army should not be used for sieges, especially for street fighting; On the other hand, the soldiers are fast, and the benefits of eating the Bryansk Front first are also visible and tangible, and he does not think that Tambov is as difficult to fight as Stalingrad, as long as he is willing to pay the price, the city can be taken in the short term.

However, the results of the attempted siege in the two days made him frown: the front-line exchange ratio quickly dropped from more than 1:13 in the early stage to less than 1:4, and the two armored armies on the north and south flanks, with the vigorous assistance of the air force, still paid more than 10,000 casualties, but the results were very few, only compressing the Red Army's defensive line by 10-15 kilometers, and it is estimated that the casualties inflicted on the other side are less than 50,000 -- and there are still many lightly wounded who can participate in the battle again.

More than 10,000 casualties may not seem too large, but if you add the casualties of 17,000 in the early stage, the total casualties of the German army are nearly 30,000, and the available combat strength of several infantry divisions is below the 80% warning line. This made Hoffman finally decide: Army Group Eastern would be responsible for the siege of the city, and the two Panzer armies would quickly move south, preparing to encircle and annihilate the flank of the Central Front, 70 kilometers north of Borisoglebsk.

In order to alleviate the confusion of troop movements, Zeitzler not only fine-tuned the order of the march, but also suggested that the 2nd Panzer Army should not first move to the southern flank, but simply let Army Group East take over the defensive line, at the cost of slowing down the overall process by one day. Considering that the two Panzer armies had used up the 4th fuel base in the early operations, Hoffman agreed to the change and ordered the rapid reinforcement of the front-line supply.

On the evening of 30 May, the vanguard of Army Group East arrived at the Tambov Line and successively exchanged defenses with the two Panzer Army, although the change of defense continued until late at night on June 1, but the control of the Tambov encirclement was now fully in charge of Weix - he set up the headquarters of Army Group East in Voronezh.

In order to better command the battle, late that night, the German base camp began to move south, from Smolensk to Kharkov - the headquarters of the two Army Group B, Central and South, converged! According to the changes in the situation on the battlefield, the Führer successively issued a series of adjustment orders, the most important of which were three:

First, the 3rd Panzer Army of General Erhard Rolls fought in conjunction with Army Group East, standing by on the front lines of Orel and Voronezh;

Second, General Moder commanded the 2nd and 4th Panzer Armies to annihilate the right flank of the enemy's Central Front;

Thirdly, General Hoult commanded the rest of Army Group B to hold the Karachi line.

The command also formed a unified opinion on the remnants of the Bryansk Front in the Tambov encirclement, believing that the Tambov enemy did not need to be in a hurry to fight, and that it might be more useful to keep it, and that Weix and Zeitzler were not giving up, and wanted to use this bait to hang a fish from the Western Front or the Steppe Military District - they did not believe that the Russians would sit idly by and ignore this huge gap, and that once the Red Army was dispatched, the 3rd Army on standby would have a chance.

They never imagined that Stalin was in a greater hurry than they were, and when Leityr reported that the Bryansk Front had only 200,000 troops left after several days of fighting, and that all kinds of materials, equipment, and supplies were not sufficient, he was completely mad -- no one who knew anything about military affairs could understand what it meant for such a big gap in the central front, let alone Stalin, who claimed to be a "strategic commander." On the one hand, he kept saying that he would no longer interfere with the specific command of the General Staff, but on the other hand, he openly and secretly tried every means to prepare for the transfer of troops to reinforce Tambov, but this effort hit a nail in all aspects:

At first, he hoped that Konev would take the initiative to stand up and express that the Steppe Military District was willing to send troops to support, but before he could open his mouth, Konev's telegram for help first reached the base camp - reporting that the Steppe Military District was facing the threat of enemy armored forces, and the headquarters were unusable, and demanded a rapid increase in troops, materials and equipment;

Then he hoped to pin his hopes on Meretskov, hoping to draw troops from the Western Front to attack Orel in order to relieve the pressure on Tambov, Meretskov did not explicitly refuse, but put forward a request: the transfer of troops from the Western Front would weaken the defense of Moscow, he hoped that the base camp would give up support in the Leningrad direction, replenish the forces to Moscow, and then he would send troops to attack Orel - asking that the Volkhov Front be handed over to the Western Front.

Although Hoffmann had made it clear in his account of Army Group North's combat mission that besieging Leningrad rather than capturing Leningrad was the main task at present, the German encirclement of Leningrad had not been very tightly constructed in recent times. But Stalin could not afford to lose Leningrad politically - he would rather lose Tambov than lose Leningrad! Therefore, he refused to transfer the Volkhov Front to Moscow, and only agreed to let the independent 7th Army go south.

Although the independent 7th Army was relatively large, with more than 150,000 troops, it was far from enough for an independent army group -- Meretskov knew very well that the Germans had ambushed at least one Panzer Army in the central region, and with a strong defensive line and more than 100,000 troops in the Orel area, any force with less than 300,000 troops to attack Oryol would be a send-off, so he continued to reach out and ask for troops and resources.

Discussions around the rescue of the central line of defense quickly formed ripples in the Moscow base camp.

Stalin first listened to Zhukov's report with a frown: Baghramyan had begun the offensive on Karachi, but the operation was not going well, the Italians not only relied on strong defensive lines to resist, but the German aviation also increased the pressure on the front.

"Tambov is in danger, and Comrade Leytel's telegrams asking for help are being sent to me one after another, and Karachi is unable to open the situation for a long time." Stalin held his beloved carved pipe, and although his tone was quite calm, the anxiety in his heart jumped on the page, "Comrade Konstantin, what are you going to do next?" ”

"Now one can only hope that the comrades of the Bryansk Front will hold out to the end, at least until Karachi is completely conquered." Zhukov was also very embarrassed, the Central Front did not have air superiority, and the troops in Bagramyan's hands were tied up, and what was even more unexpected was that the troops defending near Karachi - 2 Italian infantry divisions and 1 Italian armored division were not weak, and there were 2 German infantry divisions next to them to provide flank cover, and the fight was not smooth.

"Tell me, then, how long will it take to conquer Karachi?"

"It may take another 7-10 days."

"I don't think Tambov will last that long." Stalin shook his head, "Once Tambov is lost, there will be a huge hole in the entire front, and even if Karachi is captured at that time, it will not help, and another method must be used." ”

"What do you mean?" Vasilevsky already knew that Stalin had been secretly contacting the troops for the past two days, and he and Zhukov were completely aware of this kind of private action, but they both pretended not to know and did not break it. The only thing the two of them agree on is that they must not send reinforcements to Tambov, they will definitely be eaten.

"I would like to create the Moscow Front, with Comrade Tolbukhin as the commander of the Front, responsible for the defense of the southwestern and southern directions of Moscow." Stalin said quietly, "The preliminary consideration is to transfer both the 7th Army and the base camp reserves to the Western Front, and then divide 4-5 armies from the Western Front to form the Moscow Front." ”

In view of the fact that the strength of the Western Front was not enough to fully support the two-pronged battle, Stalin, who was forced to do nothing, finally ruthlessly stuffed all the reserve fronts that had just been formed and were still very weak in combat effectiveness into the Western Front, plus the 7th Army assigned to the Western Front, and then set aside 400,000 troops from the Western Front to form the Moscow Front. On the surface, it seems that the strength of the Western Front and its garrisons will not change, but in fact, due to its combat effectiveness, the combat capability of the Western Front has dropped by a large margin.

Vasilevsky's face was very exciting, he pretended to have just learned the news, and called out in surprise: "Oh, this is great, but the base camp cannot be without reserves, see if you can first deploy troops to the Steppe Military District, and let Comrade Konev pull the current troops of the Steppe Military District to Moscow to form a reserve, so that by the autumn we can harvest a strong force again." ”

Faced with Vasilevsky, who was pretending to be confused, Stalin was really anxious. (To be continued.) )