Mechlis, when he arrived on the Kerch Peninsula, "lived up to expectations."

As soon as he took up the "inspection work", he did two things:

The first thing was to order the Soviet soldiers, who were building fortifications, to stop what they were doing.

This is a bit unimaginable, because the Kerch Peninsula is a strip-shaped area 18 kilometers wide and 75 kilometers deep, and the Soviet army has a total of 347 tanks, 3,577 artillery pieces, 400 aircraft and 259622 soldiers crowded here, and they should use these forces and resources to build one defense line after another in front to make it difficult for the Germans to move an inch, and Khmelis actually ordered to stop the construction of fortifications.

For this reason, Tolbukhin, the chief of staff of the Crimean Front, found Hermelis and said angrily: "You can't do this, Comrade Hemelis, this will put our army in danger, and if the enemy's tanks attack us, we will not have any time to react!" ”

"Don't worry about that, Comrade Tolbuhin!" Hermelis looked at the map with confidence, even though he could barely read it: "Like I said, building fortifications is a cowardly act, we want to attack, understand?" Offensive! If we crush the enemy before they attack, they will not have a chance to storm our positions. So, if you want to build fortifications, build them on enemy positions! ”

"But the construction of fortifications does not conflict with the attack, Comrade Hemelis!" Tolbukhin insisted on his point of view: "We can attack on the basis of complete fortifications, so that even if the attack fails, we will have a place to retreat and garrison!" ”

"I said it, Comrade Tolbuhin!" Hermelis looked up at Tolbuhin angrily: "Our mission is to attack, and we will never fail, so why not let the soldiers use some strength on the attack?" ”

Tolbukhin realized that he could not convince Hermelis, so he could only helplessly reply: "Yes, Comrade Hemelis, I obey orders!" ”

"You can go!" Hermelis said.

The second thing Khmelis did was to remove Tolbukhin from his post as chief of staff, and replace him with his assistant, Major General Venech, another political representative.

This can be said to be a stupid trick, or it can be said to be a stroke of genius.

It is called a stupid trick because this Major General Tolbukhin, the chief of staff, was an experienced commanding genius, and he was removed from his post simply because he did not agree with Khmelis's approach, and he was perhaps the most prominent commander of the Crimean Front.

It is said that it is a stroke of genius because soon after the dismissal of Major General Tolbukhin was transferred to the post of deputy commander of the Stalingrad Military District, and then to the commander of the 57th Army of the Stalingrad Military District, and he commanded the Soviet army and played an important role in the defense of Stalingrad. Note: Became Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1944)

While the Soviet Union was intensively preparing for the offensive, the German army was also preparing for the offensive.

This refers not only to Manstein's 11th Army, but to the entire Army Group South, which waited for Manstein to drive the Soviets out of the Kerch Peninsula or to achieve a decisive victory and liberate the air force from the Crimean direction before launching a full-scale attack.

Therefore, from this point of view, Stalin was right to launch a counteroffensive at this time, especially because the Soviet army had short supply lines and sufficient troops, and they added more troops and resources after the defense of Moscow, and in principle they could launch a counteroffensive.

The problem was that Stalin did not understand that if the Soviet army was as well-trained as Rommel's Afrika Korps, then there would be no problem, after all, the offensive side would have more strategic and tactical advantages than the defense.

But most of the Soviet troops lacked training and communication equipment, and it was ♀ fine if the troops were used for defense, after all, they had the courage and spirit to defend their homeland and country, and if they were left in a trench, they knew very well what they had to do: destroy all the enemies who tried to pass through the trenches.

If it is used for attack, they will be like a plate of loose sand, they do not know how to cooperate with each other, and they will rush and attack the enemy's defense line indiscriminately, which will not only fail to impact the enemy's defense line, but will bring heavy casualties to themselves and consume their own resources and vitality.

Therefore, the Battle of Stalingrad was not actually launched by the German army on its own initiative, but by Stalin.

In fact, it can be said that as long as Stalin understood the level of his army, and then took advantage of the situation instead of counterattacking, the German army would not have the strength to hit Stalingrad at all.

However, Stalin, based on his own imagination and data on paper, took it for granted that the Soviet army was stronger than the German army and then launched a rash attack, which exhausted the resources and strength that the Soviet army had worked hard to accumulate during this period of time that exceeded the German army, and as a result, the German army was able to counterattack like a bamboo.

Of course, none of this was something that the Germans needed to think about, in fact it was beneficial to the Germans.

At the meeting, Manstein and the officers were discussing the plan to attack the Kerch Peninsula on the map, while Qin Chuan pondered his own questions:

If the situation is favorable, it is not good.

On the plus side, the Germans were able to eliminate a large number of Soviet troops in the defense, and once again take the strategic initiative.

The disadvantage was that the two directions of the German offensive, namely the Caucasus and Stalingrad, ended in failure, which would deal a fatal blow to the German army, and finally make the German army jump into a passive position in the whole strategy.

All in all, the most fundamental reason why the German army ended in a crushing defeat in this campaign was that the enemy was too light and thought that the Soviet army was nothing more than a rabble, or it could be said that Hitler had too much appetite and attacked the Caucasus and Stalingrad at the same time with an Army Group South.

Anyone with a modicum of military knowledge knows that it is taboo to use a single military unit to achieve multiple strategic objectives.

Hitler obviously knew this, which is why he divided Army Group South into Army Group A and Army Group B to attack the Caucasus and Stalingrad respectively.

However, this was only an independent command, and there was no substantial change in the strength and supply of troops, and the Southern Army Group was finally defeated.

What distressed Qin Chuan was that the current German army seemed to be moving towards this road.

What can be done to prevent this failure from happening again?

Unlike before, this time he was faced with two battles: the Caucasus and Stalingrad, and they were defeated almost simultaneously. Note: Although the Caucasus campaign ended in October 1943, the Soviet army switched to a counteroffensive in January 1943, and Stalingrad ended in defeat on February 2 of the same year)

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