PS: I wish all readers a happy National Day and a happy family!

Although it was clear at the strategic level that the attack on Moscow was a false goal, Army Group Center spared no effort in tactical deception, and the real objectives and content of the Battle of Citadel were conveyed only to the division level, while the armies of the Eastern countries were only conveyed to the army group level. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

It is not that the commanders of the Eastern countries cannot be trusted, but it is relatively more likely that spies will be infiltrated among them - whether in terms of race, historical heritage, or interrelationship, the difficulty of blending into these units is completely different from that of purebred German troops, and even the Eastern countries themselves admit this. In addition to the Gestapo, the army group also contained members of the anti-rebellion agencies independently formed by each country. This precautionary measure proved to be not unfounded, and cases of espionage persisted from the first days of the formation of the Eastern Divisions.

Although Army Group Center was busy, Hoffman was unsure of how successful this tactical deception would be, for the simple reason that the same trick had already been used once: at the beginning of Operation Blue last summer, Army Group Center had succeeded in fooling Stalin and the Red Army General Staff by sending maps of Moscow and surrounding cities to the regimental level, as well as creating a large number of false road signs to point in the direction of the offensive.

Even after the Blue Plan and the rush to the Caucasus had begun, Stalin remained firmly convinced that the German offensive was Moscow, and kept heavy forces in that direction, and not only did not send the most elite troops to the southern front during the summer campaign, but rashly launched the famous Timoshenko offensive near Kharkov (the First Kharkov Campaign). As a result, not only was Timoshenko's offensive defeated miserably, but the situation on the southern front also collapsed on all fronts, and more than half a year later, he had to redeploy elite troops from the direction of Moscow to fill the gap.

This time, Moder tried to repeat the old trick, and Hoffman thought that the other side would be difficult to be fooled, but after looking at the overall strategic map of the Eastern Front and the distribution of the enemy's forces, he was confident of victory.

If you don't look closely, you will think that the situation on the Eastern Front seems to have returned to the situation before the German army retreated voluntarily in September 1942: the blockade of Leningrad continued on the northern front, the central front was aimed at Moscow, and the southern front advanced into Stalingrad.

But a closer look reveals that the actual situation of the German army is much more favorable than it was nine months ago: after Turkey entered the war, occupied Transcaucasia, and the entire Caucasus Plain fell into the hands of the Axis, Russia lost the famous Baku oil field, Stalingrad was under pressure from the south, west, and north, and Manstein's troops advanced as far as Astrakhan; Iran entered the war, the Caspian Sea became a Soviet-German battlefield, and the doors of Central Asia such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were opened, and the hinterland of the Soviet Union faced a major threat; The Arctic route and the southern route were completely suspended, only the Pacific route could still import a little aid, and the Red Army received less than 15% of the Lend-Lease supplies; The non-Russian nation-states became independent one after another, established and consolidated their political power, the Russian People's Liberation Army continued to grow, and the eastern countries, in addition to maintaining order in the rear, invested more than 500,000 troops in the front line to confront the Red Army, greatly consolidating the offensive forces of the Axis.

The contrast between the forces and the technical weapons hidden in the map situation is even more incomparable, and Hoffman knows much better than his marshals and generals:

Historically, the Soviets lost about 7.9 million men (killed, wounded, and captured) in 1941, another 7.4 million in 1942, and about 2.4 million in January-April 1943 - in almost two years, the Red Army lost about 14 million men (the reason why the number of years is greater than the total is that some of the wounded of the previous year returned to the troops and suffered losses again were calculated as two or even more times); In comparison, the Axis losses over the same period were nearly 3 million men, of which the Germans lost about 2.4 million.

After the Hoffman crossing, the situation changed significantly, and the Red Army still lost nearly 14 million men - although the Red Army suffered more heavy losses on the Southern Front (Caucasus, Volga valley), the historical Mars operation and the Kharkov counterattack failed miserably, and the number of losses was relatively close in the end. However, during the same period, the losses of the Axis coalition forces were greatly reduced, with a total of only about 1.8 million, the number of more than 1 million troops lost in the Battle of Stalingrad was greatly reduced, and the number of troops lost in the Mars operation was also sharply reduced. More importantly, the number of prisoners was very small - the total number of Axis prisoners was still just over 100,000 (most of them during the Battle of Moscow), while by May 1943 the total number of Axis prisoners had reached nearly 500,000, with German prisoners alone accounting for more than 300,000.

This is equivalent to an increase of nearly 1.2 million troops in the Axis, although Hoffman reduced the strength of Italy, Romania, and Hungary by nearly 250,000, increased the strength of the two armies in Africa by nearly 250,000, allocated 100,000 troops to the Marine Corps, and adopted the policy of demobilizing veterans over 40 years old and workers of domestic military enterprises to return one after another (about 300,000 people involved), and the overall number of troops increased by 300,000.

After Turkey and Iran joined the war against the Soviet Union and added 500,000 auxiliary troops from the Eastern countries, the total number of troops fighting against Russia increased by 1.2 million, so that the total strength of the Eastern Axis exceeded 5.5 million for the first time - never reached in history, and at most it was just over 5 million when Barbarossa was launched.

Relative to the 4.5 million vs. 6.5 million ratio in the autumn of 1942, the Eastern Front now had 5.5 million vs. 7.5 million, and the Red Army was forced to reduce the strength of the Far East and Siberia to less than 1.5 million (nearly 2 million in history).

Although the combat effectiveness of the additional troops, except for the German army, was not too strong, it was much stronger than the Red Army's policy of building up the army. Hoffman read the report submitted by Galen, and now more than 90% of the ordinary soldiers in the ordinary infantry divisions of the Red Army that start with the 3xx number are reservists (over 43 years old) born before 1900, and in the infantry divisions that start with the 1xx and 2xx numbers, there are also more than 60% of the ordinary soldiers over 40 years old or younger than 18 years old, and only the Guards troops, the infantry divisions with the number less than 100 and rebuilt earlier, and most of the armored units are mainly units with a young population (18-35 years old). In contrast, the Germans had few ordinary soldiers over the age of 40 (a very small number of whom insisted on remaining in service after multiple mobilizations).

Intelligence also indicates that the Red Army is forming female divisions (composed of purely female soldiers in addition to officers and professional non-commissioned officers), with a total number of 500,000-600,000 men, and that the age of male conscription has been further extended to 16-61 years. In order to rapidly increase the number of troops, the red-eyed Stalin could no longer care about the "law and order" situation, and all prison inmates, regardless of their previous crimes, were released and organized into the army, even the most dangerous "political dissidents" could not be cared for, similar to the labor camps of the Gulag, after the internal affairs troops shot the most "dangerous" group directly in front of others, all the survivors were integrated into the troops, and even the Polish prisoners of war among them (Katyn only shot Polish officers, Nearly 300,000 Polish soldiers were also sent to labor camps) were also dispersed and integrated into the army.

After resolving the above-mentioned unstable factors, the internal affairs forces that carried out the custody, monitoring, and management were further "freed" to join the front-line troops, and many of them even fought side by side with the class enemies who had previously been imprisoned - a thrilling picture that Hoffman could not have imagined!

Through exhaustion, Stalin once again forcibly raised the national army to more than 10 million: in addition to the 7.5 million people who confronted the Axis and the 1.5 million people who were on standby in the Far East and Siberia, there were less than 1 million troops left in the huge hinterland of the Soviet Union. Nor did there be a single supporter in command centers such as the Army General Staff. Even Field Marshal Rundstead, who knew Manstein well and had an unusual relationship, could not believe that he had proposed this proposal after hearing about it, and thought that "the Führer's proposal of such a whimsical and unrealistic plan was almost the same", and the news reached Hoffmann's ears and made him roll his eyes in anger.

Perhaps knowing that a similar strategic deception would not work again, Moder preferred the Tula approach to the Battle of the Castle for three reasons:

First, Orel, the starting point of the Tula plan, was closer to the line of Army Group South, and when a large-scale battle was launched, it could be covered by the flanks of the Hoth cluster, and when Kursk and Voronezh were in the hands of the Germans, it was more tactically safe to start from Orel;

secondly, the Tula plan faced the Bryansk Front, which was weaker than the Western Front, which was responsible for the defense of Moscow to the west;

Thirdly, the Tula scenario faces a battlefield that is more favorable than that of the Rzhev-Vyazma scenario, with a wider offensive channel and more suitable for a large-scale assault by armored clusters.

The biggest shortcoming of this plan is obvious -- it is too close to Army Group South and Stalingrad, and even if it is attracted to the Red Army's heavy army group, once the southern flank campaign begins and evolves into a decisive offensive, the attracted Red Army will soon rejoin the southern flank through mobile deployment, and the time will not exceed 15 days, which is far from enough time to achieve the goal of the third stage of the Spring Awakening Campaign - to destroy 1-2 fronts of the Red Army and occupy Stalingrad.

Thus, a funny scene appeared: Manstein, who did not participate in the battle of the castle, strongly chose the Rzhev-Vyazma option, and Moder and Weix, who participated in the battle of the castle, strongly chose the Tula option.

Due to the late end of the rainy season, the offensive was postponed from early May to May 17, and then from the 17th to the 25th...... (To be continued.) )