Shouting exciting slogans, delivering incomparably exhilarating speeches, and watching the crowd surging at his feet, Stalin was faintly distracted on Moscow's Red Square. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

He was confident in his own means, and he was equally confident in the Soviet Red Army, but the current situation of the war was not under his control at all. In just a few days since the Germans launched a surprise attack, the Soviet Red Army had already been defeated into more than 20 divisions, and the remaining hundreds of planes of the Soviet Air Force were exhausted in the skies over Baranovich.

The thousands of planes mentioned in his speech may have existed, but now they have long been turned into a pile of scrap metal, and as for the armored forces, there are now less than 3,000 that can be transferred to the front.

The main forces of the Germans were not defeated at all, but their own armies were constantly crushed, and if this continued, the Soviet power that they had worked so hard to build up would be destroyed in a year or even half a year at most.

Walking off Red Square with a serious face, Molotov and other high-level officials followed behind Stalin, also afraid to make a sound, everyone knew that Stalin was very unhappy now, and the remnants of the Great Purge planned by Stalin himself were still there.

Surprisingly quietly, the crowd followed Stalin straight to the Kremlin, to Stalin's office, where they waited for the choice of fate and the adjustment of the top of the entire Soviet Red Army by the great leader.

……

The Soviets were looking for a way to regain the situation, and the Germans were also preparing for the next attack.

In Germany, in the German High Command, Heydrich and his marshals and generals were surrounded by the victory, and they now needed to take advantage of the victory, and they needed to deal a fatal blow to the Soviet Union, with the intention of destroying all the main forces on the Soviet border in one fell swoop, especially the main Soviet forces in Belarus.

However, this time Li Ling was not here, he had already returned to the front line, returning to Baranovic.

Heydrich fulfilled all the demands put forward by Li Ling, including the temporary withdrawal of the troops from the battle sequence, the immediate replenishment of troops and weapons and equipment, the awarding of the Iron Cross of the 1st Class to every survivor of the Brandenburg Regiment, the renaming of the Brandenburg Regiment to the 1st German Special Operations Brigade, and so on......

Many of Li Ling's demands seemed unreasonable to the top of the German army, but they couldn't find any reason to refuse, everyone knew how risky it was to forcibly let the Huaxia 1st Division attack Baranovich in the first place, it was almost a situation of nine deaths, and under such circumstances, the Huaxia 1st Division actually forcibly carried the siege of the enemy more than ten times its own!

This great battle was not only as simple as the elimination of eight Soviet divisions, but more importantly, they completely cut off the reinforcements of the rear units of the Soviet army to the front line, and resolved the frontal crisis of Army Group Center in one fell swoop.

Putting aside the matter of the 1st Huaxia Division, at this time there was an unprecedented controversy in the Supreme Command, the focus of the controversy was whether the German army should continue to attack and adopt a pincer offensive to wipe out all the main forces of the Soviet army in the entire territory of Belarus and the Minsk region, or should use Baranovichi as a point to make a horizontal breakthrough and encircle most of the main forces of the Soviet army west of Minsk and completely encircle the Soviet Red Army group in the Bialystok salient.

The personnel of the German army were inclined to take the lead in solving the Soviet army group in the Bialystok area, and the air force was also like this, but the German navy, which had nothing to do with Army Group Center, proposed to go around the back of Minsk and completely solve the main forces of the Soviet army in Belarus.

The people of the army and the air force simply laughed it off and did not say anything about the plan of the navy, they were in charge of the battle, and it was a ground war, what can the people of the navy understand?

But it was precisely the insistence of the naval side that made William? Keitel saw the decision that was really right.

"In accordance with the original battle plan, continue to launch a pincer offensive, the two wings continue to launch a pincer offensive behind Minsk with armored clusters first, and it is necessary to cut off Minsk from the rear in the shortest possible time, and then encircle the Soviet troops in the entire Belarusian region! What we are asking for is time, not for us to move forward step by step! Moreover, now the battle of Baranovich will definitely destroy the confidence of the Soviet army, and at this time, if we are greedy for a small victory, we will inevitably let go of the real main forces of the Soviet army, and by that time they will have enough time to arrange a defensive line in the rear to regroup, and our plan for a quick attack on Moscow will be aborted! ”

Against all odds, Keitel took the Navy's advice and made a decision for the Army, and he believed that Li Ling, who was far away in Baranovic, would also agree with his decision at this time!

……

The war was going on, and the confrontation between the Soviet Union and Germany was eye-catching enough that the stalemate Sino-Japanese war was about to fade out of sight, but the Americans did not focus all their attention on Europe, and Roosevelt continued to advance his plan.

The various disguised sanctions against Japan have been going on for half a year, and Japan has long since reached the point where it has to make a decision, and if they do not take any action to change the status quo at this time, I am afraid that it will really be in trouble.

Changing the status quo?

It's time to get started!

On May 25, the cabinet formed by Fumihiro Konoe announced his resignation, and then Hideki Tojo came to power, and the first thing Hideki Tojo did after taking office was to go straight to Moscow, where he wanted to repair diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, which had fallen to a freezing point due to the Battle of Nomenkan.

Obviously, his approach has achieved certain results.

Stalin was forced by the situation of the war to immediately send a large number of troops in Siberia to Europe, and the arrival of Hideki Tojo at this time almost hit it off.

Stalin, however, kept his hand and rejected the request for an alliance with Japan, promising only that the two sides would not interfere with each other for the next five years.

After returning to Japan, Hideki Tojo personally ordered Navy Minister Shusei Nagano to formulate an operational plan that could inflict heavy damage on the US Navy's Pacific Fleet in one fell swoop.

He is ready to make a move against the United States, and if Japan wants to make a breakthrough in the war, it must make a move with the United States, which the situation demands, and he has no choice.

However, if he wants to do something against the United States, he does not necessarily have to tear his face now, and after giving the order to Nagano Shusei, he immediately flew to Washington with several important cabinet figures, and he wanted to give the Americans the illusion that Japan seeks peace between the United States and Japan and does not want to go to war.

It's just that he didn't know that the proud purple code led by Takeo Yamamoto was cracked by the US intelligence agencies a few days ago, and all the deployments of Hideki Tojo were under Roosevelt's nose.

Hideki Tojo was acting, and Roosevelt wasn't acting?