Comrade Joseph Stalin stood in front of the huge map, paying attention to the latest marked movements of friend and foe, staring at it for a long time, and occasionally hearing a sigh.

The calendar of the Great War finally turned to 1943, and the German and Allied forces fought fiercely in Africa and the Middle East, but fell silent again on the Soviet battlefield. In the past, he wished he had such a respite so that the scarred Red Army could have time to recuperate, but now all he could do was anxiety and trepidation.

Winter is supposed to be a good day for the Red Army to launch a counteroffensive, in the first winter of 1941-1942, the Red Army successfully repelled the German army 250-350 kilometers by virtue of the victory in the defense of Moscow, and achieved the first victory of the Allies, and in the second winter of 1942-1943, he wanted to do the same, and at the same time focused the offensive on the Don front, but in front of Army Group South, he hit a wall one after another, although the losses in these two months were not small, However, compared with the losses in the early stage of the war, especially in the summer, when the German army attacked, the strength of the Red Army was not damaged by the wounds and bones, but the counteroffensive could not be fought.

In fact, since September, the German army has been preparing for winter defense, not only mobilizing and replenishing a large number of winter combat materials, but also giving up many salient areas, trying to level the front, and even taking the initiative to retreat in the face of such an attractive target as Stalingrad. Beginning in November, the successive Voronezh offensives, the Battle of the Great River, and the subsequent tug-of-war on the Don front exhausted the Red Army's hoarding of troops and materiel at the turn of summer and autumn, forcing Stalin to mobilize forces from the Far East to the west on the one hand, and to use the reserves that had been raised with great difficulty to make up for the losses on the front.

The Red Army found itself in an awkward position: although it maintained superior forces over the enemy, it could not overcome the strong German defense system and flexible mobile defense. The once vigorous "Uranus Plan" finally came to an end, and although the "Saturn Plan" aimed at encircling and suppressing the Hodt cluster was still being implemented, the effect was not very good, and several exploratory attacks in the early stage did not achieve results, not only losing the relevant armored forces, but also causing internal fear of the Tiger tank, and this kind of heavy tanks that often played a ratio of more than 10:1 became a nightmare that the Soviet tank troops could not reject, in the face of more and more German heavy armored battalions - Manstein now has 4 heavy armored battalions, The tank brigades of the Red Army could no longer act safely and independently, and had to act in groups and on the scale of the tank army before they could carry out operations, but this greatly weakened their own mobility and flexibility, and was also the root cause of the disadvantage of the operation.

In the face of the increasingly perfect defense system of the Don River, Vasilevsky wavered, and even proposed to follow the example of the German army at the turn of summer and autumn to take the initiative to retreat and disengage, arrange the defense line in the Stalingrad area, and lure the German army to attack by taking the initiative to show weakness, but no matter how he operated, the Germans were not moved at all, let alone have the intention of pursuing, and still carried out the construction of a hot defense system behind the Don River defense line, and at the same time seized the time to receive troops, equipment and supplies from the rear for replenishment and adjustment. If Vasilevsky had sent a decoy force, it would have been swallowed up in one bite - and now the cunning Manstein has become a big fish that cannot be baited.

For the German army, this was a long-term and continuous process, and after the disarmament and expansion operations were completed one after another, the German army began to adjust the distribution of armed forces and build the 1943 army division. With the passage of time, more and more countries in the East (this is Germany's collective name for the independent states established on the land of the former Soviet Union) began to build up and accumulate armed forces, and the German army gradually handed over the rear supply channels to them, and the Wehrmacht of these Eastern countries also lived up to expectations, successfully containing the partisan forces, not only being able to maintain very smooth supply channels, but also allowing the German army to greatly increase the density of troops on the front, and even the German General Staff was able to form the Eastern Army Group to provide strategic reserves for the Eastern Front. This not only meant that the Red Army could no longer expect to exhaust the German army through the intensification of the fighting on the Western Front, but also had to face German divisions in better and better condition in the future.

In the face of this embarrassing state of affairs, the General Staff of the Red Army had debates, one was to continue to confront the Germans on the front line, even if they made greater sacrifices, to maintain pressure on the Germans, and the other was to disengage the armies of the three fronts and retreat behind the Volga River to recuperate. Zhukov was an advocate of the first opinion, so he was still sparing no effort to revise and improve the "Saturn Project", and Vasilevsky was the advocate of the latter opinion. Stalin, faced with the difficult situation of riding a tiger, had gradually tilted the balance in his heart in Vasilevsky's favor, but the victory of the German army in the Middle East forced him to change this judgment.

After the German army got sufficient oil production, it had sent people in the eastern countries to investigate the number of tractors that could not be driven because of the lack of oil, and was ready to provide them with diesel fuel at the time of spring sowing and spring ploughing. He knew that if there were 50 or 1,000,000 tons of oil, which would be enough for these tractors to start, and with the fertile black soil of Ukraine and the "distribution of fields to households" that had been basically completed at present, he could not imagine what the harvest would be like in the autumn -- in the days of collective farms, Ukraine would be able to provide 25 to 30 percent of the rest of the Soviet population with an additional 25 to 30 percent of the rest of the population in addition to its own needs, even if the Germans had more food than the Soviets on average. In Stalin's opinion, it would meet the food needs of at least 15 million Germans. The thought of as many as 15 million Germans who could work in military production without worries felt a chill rise up his spine.

According to the plans of the German High Command and the Ministry of Armaments, the Waffen-SS will complete the transformation of all standardized divisions within 12 months and the Wehrmacht within 18 months. This was a new troop establishment that appeared only in the summer of 1942, and the explicit requirement in the plan was to form more than 20 troops.

An Panzergrenadier Division would consist of two Panzergrenadier regiments and one artillery regiment, each with four battalions; Panzergrenadier battalions will consist of two categories: light battalions, motorized infantry all carrying trucks or other vehicles - mechanized infantry, to paraphrase the standards of the Red Army; The other category is the heavy battalion, all equipped with half-track armored vehicles, and a regiment has half of the light battalion and half of the heavy battalion.

The 4 battalions of the artillery regiment include 2 light howitzer battalions (each battalion is armed with 16 self-propelled 105mm howitzers, nicknamed the Wasp, but unlike the historical ones, they are equipped with chassis No. 3), a heavy howitzer battalion (armed with 12 self-propelled 150mm howitzers, nicknamed the Wild Bee, but unlike the historical ones, they are equipped with a chassis of T-34), 1 anti-tank battalion (armed with 54 No. 3 assault guns or Stalkers, and 12 75mm anti-tank guns). In addition to this, there are 5 separate battalions and 7 independent company units at the division level (6 and 8 armored divisions, respectively), so the panzer division is figuratively called Type 468, and the Panzergrenadier Division is Type 357.

The separate unit consisted of 1 armored battalion (54 No. 4 tanks), 1 reconnaissance battalion, 1 engineer battalion, 1 anti-aircraft battalion (24 anti-aircraft vehicles No. 2, armed with 4 20mm anti-aircraft guns, nicknamed Grasshopper, 16 88mm anti-aircraft guns) and 1 baggage battalion. The seven independent companies include a guard company, a communications company, a gendarmerie company, a medical company, a logistics company, a transport company and a military band, with a total strength of approximately 17,000 troops.

But Stalin knew that if the Germans were allowed to tap their industrial capabilities, including the German-Italian axis and European integration, to work effectively, the equipment would not be difficult for the Germans. The Soviet Union was able to produce 2,000 tanks a month, and Germany will not be less but more after going all out, and the quality and performance of German products surpass those of Soviet goods. Now that the Germans have got their hands on the oil and occupied the rich mineral lands of North Africa, there is no longer even the only constraint. Therefore, he did not dare to let his troops retreat and could not retreat - if Germany was allowed to recuperate, the war would be completely impossible to fight in another year.

Stalin estimated very well, in Hoffman's timetable, the task of the Eastern Front in 1943 was to continue to hold the existing line of defense and at the same time bleed the Red Army, and it would not be a good time for the Soviet-German decisive battle until the completion of all the standard divisions in 1944, and now the goal of the German army was not to occupy the Soviet Union here and there, but to ensure the normal operation of the Eastern countries, cut off the material aid from the United States to the Soviet Union, and slowly suffocate the recovery ability of the Red Army with a high exchange ratio.

In the plans of the Supreme High Command, there were not one or several units with such formations, according to Hoffmann's requirements, the Type 468 Panzer Division would be 35 (Wehrmacht 28, SS 7), and the Type 357 Panzergrenadier Division was 20 (Wehrmacht 16, SS 4).

The third thing that frightened Stalin was the increase in the density of German forces on the Eastern Front: according to the information available to the Red Army intelligence officers, after the German army withdrew most of its forces from the former Yugoslavia and threw them into the Eastern Front, three more divisions were transferred from the Norwegian group in the north to the Eastern Front, including an armored division. (To be continued.) )