The sound of footsteps in the Kremlin and then converged in the same place, just before Hoffman secretly arrived at the front for final mobilization, the Soviet High Command was also engaged in an in-depth discussion of the current situation and the direction of the war. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The Red Army suffered a serious defeat in the Battle of Chunxing, losing not only large swathes of territory in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, but also the crucial oil field area of Baku, and hundreds of thousands of troops and a large amount of equipment. Originally, according to the assumption of Zhukov and Vasilevsky's rapid disengagement, the Red Army could have suffered fewer deaths, but Stalin first had to retreat because of the stimulation of the Katyn incident - only 2 armies were lost, but in the end 3 army groups were lost; Later, when faced with the attack of a large corps, Tyulenev had to hold on to Grozny in order to carry the oil field equipment, but the equipment was not transported much, and most of the troops left there were wiped out.

In the end, the reason why the Germans gave up the pursuit was not because Manstein was not strong, but on the contrary, because he was unwilling to lose his valuable armored forces in the mud when the grout period came. Now the weather has become the most advantageous weapon of the Red Army, and the Germans do not fight in the cold and grout (twice a year, long in spring and short in autumn), and they cannot use their hands for at least 4-5 months of the year. But even this made the Red Army feel overwhelming.

Although Zhukov and Vasilevsky made mistakes in judgment in the early stage of the campaign, the adjustment in the middle of the battle and the timely organization of the retreat were effective, and they partially made up for the mistakes, and no one dared to hold Stalin, who bore the highest responsibility, held accountable, and only dealt with the characters who were too low-level and could not deal with the party and foreign affairs, and finally got this unlucky egg to fall on the head of Tylenev. Since the impact of the loss of the Caucasus, especially Transcaucasia, is of a global nature, the commander of the front army who is responsible for defending the territory is not wronged. As soon as the smoke of gunfire on the front line ended, the order of the Supreme Command was issued, abolishing the formation of the Caucasian Front and integrating all its subordinate units into the Southwestern, Don, and Stalingrad armies.

Fortunately, Tyulenev has always followed the general secretary closely, and the contradictions with other colleagues are not deep, and he also tried every means to protect a group of people during the Great Purge era, plus everyone knew that he was actually a scapegoat, so everyone came forward to say good things for him, and in the end, the result of his personal treatment was not serious: he was demoted by one level, sent to the rear to supervise military production, and worked as an errand under Voroshilov.

After Rommel's Middle East Army was put into the battlefield and Iran and Turkey joined the war with a total of more than 700,000 troops, the Red Army General Staff estimated that the enemy strength on the southern flank had reached 2.5 million, and the entire front was now from Voronezh to Astrakhan, just over 1,200 kilometers, much shorter than last autumn. The enemy forces increased their forces on the one hand, and on the other hand, the defensive line was shortened, and the pressure on the Red Army was increasing day by day.

In order to rapidly increase his strength, Stalin has spared no cost, in addition to the Caucasian Front was dismantled and replenished, Konev's steppe military district was directly evacuated, nearly 300,000 troops were transferred to the southern flank to join the replenishment, and then the remaining 250,000 troops of the base camp reserve in the Moscow direction and the 150,000 troops of the Central Asian Military District were also all repleted, and after the replenishment of 700,000 troops, the southern front line still had only 2.3 million troops, which was not only less than the Axis army in terms of quantity, but also extremely inferior in quality.

In the end, the base camp made up its mind, and transferred 350,000 troops from the Far East, plus the new recruits gathered in the Urals region, a total of 500,000 troops were gathered to form the Central Front, but there was a disagreement on the appointment of commanders, Zhukov strongly recommended Konev to be the commander of the Front, but Stalin had a bad impression of Konev, thinking that he had repeatedly opposed the attack on the Rzhev-Vyazma salient when he was serving in the Western Front, and was "afraid of difficulties", and did not agree to let him hold such an important position as commander, In the end, it was decided that Baghramyan would be appointed.

If we follow the trend of history, the Western Front will launch the "Mars Operation" according to Zhukov's plan, and it will encounter the strong defense of Moder's 9th Army, and as a result, the Soviet army will lose nearly 1.5 million and cannot take this salient, resulting in a unique fiasco, and Konev's attitude against the offensive is undoubtedly correct. Of course, Army Group Center also lost more than 300,000 troops in this way, and filled up all the mobile forces on the Eastern Front, so that it was impossible to reinforce the Sixth Army in the direction of Stalingrad - Paulus, and this was the end of it.

Unexpectedly, after the crossing, the Führer implemented the strategy of "abandoning the salient and leveling the front", and Meretskov's Western Front only used more than 300,000 troops to take down the two important salient areas that the German army voluntarily gave up - the Rzhev salient and the Demyansk salient, and withdrew the "pistol facing Moscow's chest", and the losses were not worth mentioning compared with the results of the battle. Of course, in this way, the German losses were correspondingly smaller, only more than 30,000, and it was with this 1:10 battle loss ratio that Moder took the high position of commander of Army Group Center.

In 1940, he was still the chief of the General Staff, and his status was much higher than that of Zhukov and Vasilevsky, but because he was the chief director of the autumn exercises, he favored the failed Belarusian Military District Commander Pavlov over the victorious Kiev Military District Commander Zhukov, and at the suggestion of Timoshenko, he was removed from the post of Chief of the General Staff and replaced with Deputy Defense Commissar in charge of air defense.

As a result, he worked in this position for more than a year, and within a month before the implementation of the Barbarossa plan, three German planes entered Soviet airspace from different airspaces (two landed safely and one forced landed), and he was identified as a spy, and at Beria's behest, he was beaten to death by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Meretskov, who could not stand it, was forced to admit to participating in a non-existent spy group and was almost shot directly, but the Barbarossa raid saved him - the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not care about killing people at all. Three months later, due to the retreat of the front, Stalin, who was desperately ill and rushed to the hospital, remembered Meretskov and went straight from prison to join the war, first in charge of an army group, and then as commander of the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts.

After the defeat of Timoshenko in May 42, Meretskov completely overwhelmed his political opponents and gained a good impression in Stalin's mind. By September, Stalin hinted that Zhukov was ready to launch a campaign on Mars to seize the Rzhev-Vyazma line, Timoshenko, Konev and others were opposed, but Meretskov clearly expressed his support, believing that he could command the troops of the Western Front to fight, and even make a military order - if he loses, he will be shot! The result was a great success, with only 300,000 troops to achieve the goal of the campaign, which not only pleased Stalin, but also raised the prestige of Zhukov, who planned the battle plan, to the clouds.

This result greatly strengthened Meretskov's position, not only deepened relations with Zhukov, but also completely drove Timoshenko into the abyss - now Stalin was completely too lazy to listen to the latter's words, and Konev was completely injured by mistake, but fortunately with Zhukov to protect him, the problem was not too big.

The Battle of Mars was a rare battle in which both the Soviet and German armies considered themselves victors: the Soviets lost 300,000 and regained the important territory, and the Germans played a high exchange ratio of nearly 1:10.

With all kinds of unconventional means, the base camp restored the strength of the southern flank to about 2.8 million. Originally, according to Zhukov's plan, at least one more front army would be transferred, and the target he had set his eye on was the Bryansk Front, which had more than 500,000 troops. However, Stalin refused the request and only agreed to let the front fight on the southern flank, but in terms of subordination, it was also assigned to Moscow.

Therefore, the information that Galen submitted to Hoffman was not very accurate: although the steppe military district behind the Bryansk Front remained famous, it was either middle-aged uncles of 4 or 50 years old, or out-and-out female soldiers, and it was impossible to provide any support, and its combat effectiveness was probably not comparable to that of the temporarily armed Trotto Labor Front - at least it was full of young and strong laborers; Although the name and approximate strength of the Central Front were known, the Germans did not know that there were many Far Eastern troops in it—the combat strength was slightly stronger than that of the troops that fought on the southern flank all the year round; Only one thing Galen said very clearly is that the direction of Central Asia is unusually empty, and except for a few troops along the Caspian coast, the hinterland of Central Asia, which is more than a million square kilometers, is completely undefended.

On the other hand, the Red Army had many misunderstandings about the German intelligence detectives: although it had been decided to implement the Tambov plan, the headquarters was still located in Smolensk, and the distance between the two was too great for the two to connect the operation; The main assembly place of Army Group East, which was tasked with the reserves of the Eastern Front, was Orel, which was in the hands of the Soviets, but it was not judged to be true. As far as intelligence work is concerned, it is basically in a state of half-heartedness.

"Comrade General Secretary, from the information we have and the analysis of the situation of the surge in the enemy's telegraph signals in the recent period, the enemy's next attack is imminent, but there are still differences between the base camp and the General Staff as to what the enemy's main target is, and there are corresponding difficulties in the allocation of troops." Facing the map, Vasilevsky first introduced the general situation of troops. (To be continued.) )