At the large desk, the commander of the Caucasian Front, General of the Red Army, Ivan Vladimirovich Tyulenev, put down the intelligence file in his hand with a sad face, rubbed his temples vigorously, and seriously thought about the current situation and the war. As one of only five generals before the outbreak of the Great War, he has a lot of seniority. During the Civil War, as an excellent general from a cavalry background, he not only performed brilliantly on the battlefield, but also stood particularly firmly politically - he belonged to the Semyon-Budyonny system, and was always regarded by Comrade Stalin as his own and confidant, and was one of the models of political reliability, excellent work style, and hard work, no matter how the wind of the Great Purge blew, it never blew on his head.

In addition, Tyulenev also has a very good point, probably because of the background of the cavalry general, the free and easy personality, he is very compatible with many high-ranking officers, the popularity is very good, the temper is not bad, and the character is even more well-known - even at the moment when everyone is in danger such as the Great Purge, he is not willing to do anything to fall into the ground, and even protects a large number of subordinates within the scope of his ability. Based on such characteristics, Comrade Stalin valued him very much, and on the eve of the war promoted him to the rank of the most important commander of the Moscow Military District.

Of course, Tyulenev's shortcomings are also more obvious: he has always stuck to his obscure post, although his rank is very high, his position is prominent, but his command ability seems to be a little disproportionate to the military rank, as a cavalry general, his overall command ideas and ideas are still largely stuck in the period of civil war, unable to keep up with the evolution of mechanized warfare, in the eyes of many observers, he and Tukhachevsky are exactly two diametrically opposed examples. Fortunately, he was not as confused and conformist as Budyonny, and he was still eager to learn the essence of armored warfare, so he stumbled into the threshold of modern warfare, but even he admitted that his command level was slightly inferior to Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Vatutin, Konev, Rokossovsky and others.

Stalin himself, as well as the General Staff of the Red Army, were generally aware of some of the facts, and often assigned him to secondary battlefields, which was both a kind of love and a kind of protection. Facts have proved that he did a good job in the secondary battlefield, at least he conscientiously completed the tasks assigned to him without stabbing Lou Zi, and there are not many such high-ranking generals in the Red Army.

Due to the special changes at the turn of summer and autumn, the Transcaucasian Front, the North Caucasus Front, and the South Caucasus Front, which should have appeared in history, were not established, and only the number of the Caucasian Front has been retained. In the battle at the turn of summer and autumn, although the Caucasus was close to the direction of Rostov-on-Don, relatively flat, and conducive to armored warfare and movement warfare were defeated by Kleist, Tyulenev still firmly held the passes of the Caucasus Mountains, "thwarted" the landing attempt of the German army on the Black Sea coast, and saved most of the troops. This merit is not to say that compared with the excellent commanders of the Front, at least it is much stronger than the Voronezh Front.

Now he was faced with a new problem: Stalin and the General Staff ordered him to draw reliable troops into Persia to fight, and demanded vigilance against the actions of the Turkish side.

Originally, the pressure on Tyulenev was not so great, and Stalin initially only asked for 50,000 troops from the Caucasian Front, and he would transfer another 100,000 troops from Central Asia and hand them over to reliable general commanders, but at the repeated demands of the British, Moscow changed its decision, and finally agreed to transfer 100,000 troops from the Caucasian Front and 50,000 from Central Asia - he changed from cooperating to dominating, which made him feel that it was much more difficult and problematic.

Zhukov and Vasilevsky did not agree on the question of whether to consider replacing the commander of the Tyulenev Front, Zhukov proceeded from the war situation and hoped to transfer the more fierce and aggressive Konev to the direction of the Caucasus, and to transfer Tyulenev to the Northwest Front, which is currently calm, while Vasilevsky believed that such a change could not be made, first, Tyulenev did a good job in this position, and there was nothing to find fault with, and Konev had always caused trouble for the General Staff and Comrade Stalin; Second, Tyulenev's personality and temper were able to unite his subordinates and properly handle the local nationalist sentiments in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan as well as the complex peripheral emotions of Turkey and Persia.

On this point, Voroshilov, Budyonny held similar opinions, and even Molotov was against Konev being put in office - now that the attitude of the Turks is very unstable, what if his fiery temper provokes the Turks? Moreover, the Caucasus is a stable front, and the Red Army does not intend to fight here, unless it is really necessary to form a separate front army to fight in Persia, according to Comrade Stalin's ideas, it is better to be cautious and cautious.

Zhukov was persuaded, and he no longer insisted on his point of view, but instead asked Tyulenev to form a reliable army group to enter Persia.

Tyulenev quickly completed the task: in view of the complex national forces of Turkey and Persia and the relatively rugged terrain, he deliberately chose the 45th Army for reinforcement, which initially consisted of the 138th Mountain Infantry Division, the 31st and 136th Infantry Divisions, the 1st Mountain Cavalry Division, the 55th Bastion Area Division (reorganized into an artillery division after strengthening), and the 63rd and 76th Mountain Infantry Divisions, the 236th Infantry Division, and the 6th Tank Division were transferred from the 47th Army, with a total strength of 6 infantry divisions. 1 cavalry division, 1 tank division and 1 artillery division, with a total size of 100,000 horses. But there are only more than 100 tanks, and the more advanced T-34 has just over 50, the rest are either T-60 or T-70, and even 4 T-26s. For this reason, when Tyulenev submitted his compilation report to the General Staff, he specifically pointed out: Although the T-60, T-70, and T-26 have relatively poor performance in armored warfare, they can give full play to their characteristics of flexibility and lightness in fighting on the rugged terrain of the Persian plateau, so he believes that they can basically meet their needs.

In addition to asking the General Staff to add 200 aircraft and a batch of artillery shells to him, Tyulenev was very considerate of Moscow's difficulties and did not make any further requests. This touched everyone, including Zhukov, but moved to be moved, and in the end, the request for 200 planes was not implemented, so he only cobbled together 70 planes to him, and gave him more than 20 additional T-60s to make up for it, and then with a stroke of the pen, it was agreed that Lieutenant Mezov would continue to serve as the commander of the strengthened army group, and the number was still the 45th Army, also known as the Persian Army internally.

In addition to personnel and organizational scheduling, while seizing the time to allow the troops to advance, Tyulenev discussed the operational policy with Lieutenant General Mezov and others, and finally determined that the goal of the Persian army group was not to drive out and destroy the Germans in Persia and Iraq, but to defend northern Persia and Transcaucasia with a properly and solid defensive line, give full play to the combat superiority of the mountain infantry, and the core focus was to protect the Baku oil fields.

After arranging all this, Tyulenev also specially sent the chief of staff to the General Staff to report on the situation, and reported to the General Staff on the operational objectives and principles, the general deployment and the key points of fortification, and at the same time told Zhukov and others that he had arranged an additional reserve of 50,000 to 70,000 people in the back. The whole plan was careful and meticulous, everything that should be considered was considered, and there were not many objections from everyone in the base camp, and even Zhukov could not find anything wrong with it -- he believed that the goal of this plan was very calm and sober, which showed that the commanders of the front armies and the commanders of the group armies had thought carefully and were not the product of being hot-headed and patting their heads.

Zhukov privately sighed to Vasilevsky: "In the end, it is the commander personally selected by Comrade Stalin, and it is much better to respect and understand his superiors than some commanders who act recklessly and lose their temper with the leaders at the slightest disagreement." ”

Vasilevsky just smiled and didn't say much - what leader doesn't like such subordinates?

In order to express its attention to and reassure the Caucasus direction, the base camp made a vow that once spring came, it would definitely send heavy troops from the Don River front to the south and strive to make a breakthrough in the Middle East theater.

The attitude of the Red Army is now reversed, it used to look forward to the early arrival of winter, but now it is looking forward to the early passage of winter. The operations on the Don River front have not been smooth, they have not been able to enter or retreat, and the armies of the three fronts have obviously not made any progress but can still only stubbornly hold on there, and once the spring begins, the situation will be easy to handle -- the earth is thawing, the Don River is flowing again, the roads are rugged and difficult to navigate, and the characteristics of the German mechanized troops being fast and flexible cannot be brought into play, and this is very conducive to the adjustment of the Red Army's retreat in great strides. And now is the time when the land is as hard as iron, which is very convenient for the activities of the German armored forces.

And the Russians were shocked to find that this winter, unlike the previous one, was a great surprise that all kinds of vehicles in Germany were not unusable due to the cold. How did they know that in order to prevent the recurrence of this situation, German chemists had devoted a lot of energy to the study of lubricants and antifreeze formulations under extremely cold conditions since the beginning of 1942, and since September, the Eastern Front Quartermaster Office has been continuously sending improved lubricants, antifreeze and other cold materials to the front line, coupled with Germany's complete control of the Black Sea transportation channels, the logistics of Army Group South is the best. So Manstein was not afraid of the Winter War now. (To be continued.) )