Berlin, outside Reinhardt's Führer's office.

Paulus, who was at the front, almost trotted into Reinhardt's office. Behind him, several staff officers in the Command, who were also Reinhardt's henchmen, also followed.

In terms of Reinhardt's status and identity, his office was not too big, just a rectangular room with an area of less than a hundred square meters. It was filled with rows of bookshelves, high-quality porcelain of human height bought from the East, and a few famous paintings from France.

Paulus, who was accustomed to the decorations, did not look at the decorations, but walked quickly to Reinhardt, who was sitting in a chair behind his desk, and placed a document marked "Urgent" in red on the table.

On the chair, Reinhardt, who had formed a long-term tacit understanding with Paulus, did not even open his mouth to communicate, and tacitly opened the document handed by the other party.

Sure enough, as soon as he turned the first page, Reinhardt smiled wryly.

The first page is a glaring operational diagram. On the map, hundreds of square kilometers of transportation arteries, towns, defense lines, fortifications, airports, and strategic points on the eastern front are densely marked.

Countless red and blue arrows representing the Soviet Union and Germany are interspersed back and forth on the map, but it is not difficult to see that the density of arrows on the Soviet side is far denser and larger than that of the German army.

Unsurprisingly, another piece of bad news.

"Smack!" Reinhardt rubbed his temples, simply closed the document, shook it aside, and then said to Paulus with some difficulty: "I won't read it, you can pick the important content and report it to me." ”

Knowing that the Führer's pressure had increased sharply recently, Paulus didn't say anything more, and reported directly and obediently.

"According to the situation on the front, the Soviet army transferred more than 400,000 troops from the rear less than a month after we started the war against Britain, and all of them were transported to the southern front of our eastern garrison." Paulus's face was a little embarrassed as he said this, and as he spoke, he glanced at Reinhardt, who was leaning back in his chair and listening.

In fact, the reason why the Soviet army was able to increase the size of the army of more than 400,000 in such a short period of time after receiving the news of the German attack on Britain was able to increase the size of the army. To a large extent, they still rely on the railway network that German engineers have rebuilt for them over the years.

In fact, although the world's first railroad was invented and built by the British, the Germans were the first to keenly discover the strategic value behind the railway. Moltke the Elder, the famous chief of the Prussian General Staff, even famously said: "Don't build more fortresses, give me more railways!" ”

As the predecessor of Germany, Prussia relied on the full use of the railroad to quickly defeat the invincible Second French Empire and establish the Second German Empire. At that time, the Germans even called their own railway trains "Paris Express"!

In the last world war, the German army was able to defeat Russia, the predecessor of the Soviet Union, because of the use of the railway network.

In the early days of World War I, a military column crossed the Hohenzollern Bridge on the Rhine almost every 10 minutes. Crucially, a total of 11,000 trains participated in the mobilization, and not a single train was delayed.

In this, there is the role of the German meticulous and rigorous style, and the complete railway transportation foundation of Germany is playing a role.

Later, after Reinhardt came to power and gained power, the first major thing he did was to unify the loose railway companies in the country and establish the Deutsche Bahn under the control of the Rheinharn consortium.

In the 39 years of the blitzkrieg in Poland and the 40 years of the French War, the German railways successfully completed their tasks, including large-scale transportation tasks such as transporting soldiers and evacuating residents.

After that, Deutsche Bahn did not make much effort to accept and adapt the Polish and French railways, because the standard track width and technical level of European countries were relatively modern. In Poland, the Germans established the Eastern Railway, which was at the same level as the German Railways, and on the Western Route, in principle, the railways were still under the jurisdiction of the host country, but in Paris Germany established the Western Railway Transport Department ETRA, which supervised the operation of the local railways.

There is nothing wrong with the above. But the problem lies in the fact that in order to solve the problem that in the future Soviet-German war, after the German army invades the Soviet Union, it will fall into a logistical crisis because of the poor railway and highway system of the Soviet Union, Reinhardt and the Soviet Union have also launched railway and highway reconstruction cooperation.

Prior to the cooperation, the Soviet Union's densest railway network hubs were only in Moscow, Leningrad and Donets. On the Soviet-Polish border, only four two-track railways could be used by the Germans after the war.

That is, there are four railways from the Neman River to Leningrad, the Bug River to Moscow via Orsha, the Bug River to Donets via Klimenchuk, and the San River to Odessa.

To make matters worse, these four east-west railways were sparse in the vast western territory of the Soviet Union.

From Reinhardt's point of view, both Napoleon and Hitler suffered from the problems of the Russian or Soviet roads, and as a traverser, he should have set out to change this known problem.

He arranged for German engineers to replace the 38 kilograms per meter of soft pine wood originally used by the Soviet Union with the German standard of 49 kilograms per meter of railway sleepers.

Moreover, according to the standard of 1,600 sleepers per kilometer laid by German railways, the standard of 1,440 in the Soviet Union was completely changed.

Finally, because the German railways used screws and washers to fix the rails, the German engineers also reminded the Soviets not to fix them directly with spikes according to Reinhardt's request.

Basically, more than 85 percent of the Soviet Union's railway network today has completely copied the German railway structure.

Now, if the German army enters the territory of the Soviet Union again, even if the Soviets destroy part of the railway, the German army can quickly restore the high-quality railway that can be completely connected with the German railway on the basis of the original Soviet railway.

That is, the German army had the guarantee of attacking the Soviet Union.

Surprisingly, the USSR will do it first!

"My Führer, on the southernmost front, because the disparity in strength is too great, and the Soviet army is concentrated in the south to use elite troops, using a large number of air and armored units, as the deputy commander-in-chief of the SS, Commander Steve, has been ordered by the SS to strategically move 50 kilometers." Paulus continued to report to Reinhardt on the consequences of the upgrade of the Soviet railway network for the German army.

"Steve retreated?!" Hearing this, Reinhardt, who had been silent, said in disbelief with emotion: "How could they retreat? And what about Reichenau's Sixth Army? They were deployed on the northern flank of the SS, why not support in time! ”

Reinhardt trusted Admiral Reichenau very much, and the outside world has always called this Wehrmacht general who first joined the National Socialist Party "Reinhardt's most loyal lackey." ”

The deployment of Reichenau's Sixth Army on the northern flank of the SS was to count on his loyalty, to be able to support the SS in time and to cooperate perfectly with Steve.

Prior to this, Steve and this Wehrmacht general had indeed cooperated very well with each other, and there was no sign that Reinhardt could be worried.

"General Reichenau......" I saw Paulus's solemn expression and report slowly in a low tone: "He had a sudden heart attack and unfortunately died on the front line...... Now in the Sixth Army, the command structure is very chaotic. If the Sixth Army was able to stabilize its own front, it was already the staff that worked hard to do it......"