"Any idea why they stopped?" While packing his bags, Wittman asked Karl, the gun commander next to him? Wegener.

Cal? Wegener laughed and said, "General Guderian said that when someone needs to rest, their tanks run out of gas. ”

This is a joke, from Guderian's assessment of his armored forces. At the time of the French campaign, the German armoured forces advanced so fast that they often lied that they ran out of gasoline and then stopped to rest.

Only this time I heard that the troops on the front line stopped advancing because they suffered a small loss and waited for the rear troops to follow up.

For the German armored forces, being stopped by the enemy from the offensive can definitely be regarded as a great shame.

But this also illustrates how little Germany knew about its enemies before the Führer's intelligence services came into the groove.

"Maybe when we get to the front, they'll have enough gasoline to keep going." Wittman looked at the Iron Cross in his suitcase, and the movements of his hands suddenly slowed.

It was the Iron Cross he received in England, and at that time he was the number one tank killer in the German armored forces.

Driving the Führer's proud Leopard tank, slaughtering dozens of British and American tanks in Britain, it can be said that he is a veritable king of tank warfare.

It's a pity that this record has now been broken, and there was a young tank commander on the Eastern Front who actually achieved the supernatural record of destroying 75 Soviet tanks.

Every time he thought that he had been surpassed by others, Wittmann's heart was not very comfortable.

If he is beaten in what he does best, he really doesn't know what else he can be proud of.

Fortunately, he finally made it to the Eastern Front in time, and arrived here at the height of the fighting on the Eastern Front.

They had just disembarked from their own trains, and the freight train in the distance had already begun to unload the Leopard tanks that had just been sent to the front.

These new Leopard tanks are all the latest improved combat models, that is, the "latest improvements" that are closer to the needs of front-line operations.

The new Leopard tank has machine gun mounts installed on the hatches of the commander and loader, and machine guns can be mounted on demand.

Of course, there is also an accessory in the trunk of these tanks, which can be mounted on the machine gun mount and used as a shield for the machine gun.

At the same time, these newly mass-produced Leopard tanks are equipped with plate skirts on the side hulls to strengthen the side defense of the tank.

There are many improvements, which are also based on the requirements of the front-line troops, and the optimal design is carried out.

"With this machine gun, I can also rely on my own judgment to attack when dealing with infantry." Wittman said with a smile as he looked at the Leopard tank in the distance, the empty machine-gun mounts on the roof.

Although due to time constraints, all the tanks in this batch are not equipped with special machine guns for the commander, but with a shelf, at least there is a possibility of improvement, isn't it?

The German commander has always had only one task, and that is to command the tank with peace of mind. He himself did not have the task of opening fire to attack, which to a certain extent really affected the combat effectiveness of the tank.

You know, in the past, when the commander found an enemy infantry on the flank of the tank, all he could do was to tell the gun commander to turn the turret and attack the infantry on the flank.

Obviously, this is not worth the cost. Now that he has the commander's own dedicated machine gun, he can use the machine gun to kill the threat as soon as he spots the enemy.

Moreover, another important improvement is that with the commander's machine gun and the machine gun shield in front, the German tank commander leans out to direct the tank battle, which is a little safer.

Bowman, the loader, packed his bags and stood up to look out of the small station that had been repaired.

It's definitely in the middle of nowhere, a full 10 kilometers from Minsk. There were trees everywhere, and everywhere there were piles of supplies needed for front-line operations.

Because Germany controls absolute air supremacy, there is not even a basic air defense camouflage here.

The cargo was piled up in the open area, and the busy logistics soldiers did not have enough experience to ask about the air safety of those goods.

Countless trucks are busy, countless horse-drawn carriages are busy here. Without the support of the railway, the workload of the German logistics troops was so much that it could be described as an adjective of terror.

In order to allow the troops to have enough offensive resources as much as possible, a lot of material has been compressed to the point that it is unbearable.

For example, the supply of cigarettes for front-line troops has been cut to a dispensable level because of the need to transport enough squandering gasoline.

Similarly, canned food, which is a luxury item, has also begun to be rationed in limited quantities. Most of the attacking troops relied on the most basic food rations to keep themselves from dying of starvation.

"God forbid, the food here may be worse than in England." Seeing the soldiers unloading all sorts of low-quality food from the train in the distance, the electromechanical officer Eihof complained.

You must know that when Britain was fighting, because of the capacity of the strait, the food in Germany was very bad.

Sometimes people have to run out of their own places and look for something to eat.

But now, seeing the food being distributed, everyone knows that their days in England are far from hell.

"My God, are those things eaten by men?" Duke, the driver, heard the sound and saw piles of dried vegetables being thrown off the train.

In order to keep them fresh, most of the dried vegetables have been stripped of most of the water, and now those things are almost the same as seaweed, so they can only be soaked in soup to satisfy hunger.

But they saw that the soldiers who were responsible for carrying the goods of these dried vegetables were clearly stealing these dry vegetables, and they did not dislike them at all.

Germany is a country with few strategic resources, and even if it wins a series of foreign wars, it will take at least a solid decade to really defeat the countries it has won.

Transporting a barrel of gasoline to the front line will cost you half a barrel halfway through. Such a war was truly desperate, and it was also desperate for all the senior German commanders.

Their troops were not defeated by the enemy, but they were dragged down by their own logistical supplies.

The Soviet counterattack in the Krupki area also made the German armored forces realize their crisis and shortcomings, deployed the defensive line in place, and began to wait for more German soldiers to arrive behind them.