Nearly twenty square kilometers east of the Karelian Isthmus had been turned into a huge barracks set up by Timoshenko.

Yes, Timoshenko's reputation as a modern Soviet star stems from his great victory in Poland in cooperation with Germany.

However, this does not mean that he is just a wine bag and rice bag that does nothing.

If it weren't for the brilliance of the German blitzkrieg, with Timoshenko's steady tactics in the Polish campaign, he would definitely be a real famous general in the last world war.

The triangular pyramidal sorties stretched from the Gulf of Finland in the northernmost part of the Karelian Isthmus to the continuous depressions, plains, forests, valleys, and rivers to Lake Ladoga, the southernmost point of the Karelian Isthmus. The battalions are continuous, continuous.

The dense Soviet troops, like locusts, poured onto the few large highways, winding and entrenched, eyeing the tiger.

And in their rear, there are even a huge number of follow-up troops, which are constantly converging towards the front.

After a week of tentative sorties, Timoshenko, the famous general who had made the greatest achievements in eastern Poland and was now the most successful in the Soviet Union, had already figured out the deployment of the Finnish army and put himself in a posture of finishing his work in one battle.

Nearly a month after his predecessor, General Meretskov, led the 350,000-strong troops of the Leningrad Military District in pursuit of the Mannerheim Line, Finland's remaining viable force had been greatly reduced.

Now, the tired troops of the Leningrad Military District have been withdrawn and repaired, but the Finnish army has not had the opportunity to get the same respite.

What Timoshenko has now is fully armed, well-equipped, highly motivated, well-organized, subordinate to the two armies of the Kiev Military District, and nearly 200,000 cutting-edge divisions. Plus 20 artillery regiments, 15 aviation regiments, and 24 "cannon fodder divisions" that Stalin transferred to him from other military districts.

At this time, what Timoshenko needed to do was actually not difficult.

That is to bully the weak, use the momentum of Mount Tai to overwhelm the top, and use the tactics of the sea of people to collapse the crumbling Mannerheim defense line of the Finnish army! Moreover, his troops completely crushed the army of the small country of Finland in terms of equipment level and fire support capabilities.

In Timoshenko's view, no matter how tenacious the Finnish army is, it can only delay the date of destruction again and again. In such a completely asymmetrical war, it is only a matter of time before the side with weak national strength loses!

In the past two months, the geographical advantage on which the Mannerheim Line has relied has long been in tatters. The forests of the central part of the Karelian Isthmus lost almost half of their area in the fighting. The highlands and small dirt slopes that the Finnish army had resisted before were even cut by a whole layer under the fire of the Soviet army!

With the continuous arrival of the follow-up troops, and the strategic materials were also transferred to the front line through the high-speed railways and highways built by German engineers. The legions under the command of Timoshenko have swelled to a terrifying scale.

Counting the nearly 300,000 remnants left by Meretskov for him, and the 250,000 cannon fodder transferred by Stalin for him, the number of troops that Timoshenko can directly command has exceeded 700,000, which is 10 times or more than the current total strength of the Finnish army!

And the essence of this 800,000-strong army, that is, the new troops of the Kiev Military District, was all mobilized by Timoshenko in a huge group of sortie positions east of the Karelian Isthmus. The huge barracks that could accommodate the entire division of troops, and the warehouses where countless murderous materials were stored, Temoshenko only took a very short time to build.

In this group of positions, there are convoys coming from the rear almost all the time, and they have different numbers from the confluence here. Unlike a month ago, every number that arrives now means a truly full army. They have not attrition, they have sufficient ammunition, they are full of ambition, and they can be filled into any theater of operations at any time.

Timoshenko believed that as long as he gave an order, the Finns would completely lose their fighting spirit in a new round of Soviet troops under the tactics of overwhelming and endless crowds.

We have the population, we have the troops, and we have the reserves. To oppose the Soviet Union, we have to recognize this cruel reality!

"Commander Timoshenko, Chairman Stalin sent a telegram urging us to launch a general offensive as soon as possible." In Timoshenko's front-line command, his commissar eagerly reminded: "Let's not say that the international situation in which we find ourselves has been deteriorating, but that for every day that this war drags on, the political influence of the Soviets will drop by one point." If we continue to fight so tepidly, I am afraid that before we can launch a general offensive to take Finland, the urgent general secretary will have to change the commander again. ”

Timoshenko, who was Meretskov's successor, naturally knew how impatient Stalin was for victory. The fact that he insisted on replacing him, despite the prestige lost by recalling Meretskov, who was his confidant, is enough to show how much he now values victory in the war against Finland.

In the past, even if the person sent was incompetent, as long as he was personally sent by Stalin, he would not be replaced. Because in his opinion, the substitution is to admit that he made the wrong decision in the first place.

But now, Stalin has changed his commander. And it was an order to forbid, and to remove General Meretskov as quickly as possible!

Based on this alone, Timoshenko was able to guess how strong Stalin's inner agitation really was. Because if he did something else, he would definitely insist on letting his cronies do it to the end.

Smiling at his co-production political commissar, who had been working for a long time, Timoshenko seemed to comfort him and said to himself: "Don't worry, the new offensive plan has already been formulated, and the focus of the attack has been determined in a week's trial." The general secretary wants to attack in a big way, and we can do it now. ”

Although he is not very good at military skills such as combat deployment and command in battle, the political commissar still has basic common sense of marching operations. The soldiers are overwhelming! With the warlike divisions he and Timoshenko brought from the Kiev Military District, there was no reason why they could not defeat the remnants of the Finnish army, which were overwhelmed by the combat load in turns.

Nodding, the commissar habitually spread out the battle map for Timoshenko.

Personally annotating the drawings for Timoshenko and accompanying him to make the final drawing of each battle plan has become a tacit understanding between the two.

Soon, with the help of the political commissar, Timoshenko completed a rough deduction on the map.

"No problem!" Timoshenko, who had completed the 23rd deduction confirmation, confirmed it again.

Gritting his teeth, Timoshenko poked his index finger at a section highlighted in a red circle on the map, and said word by word: "As long as we take here, no matter how much the rest of the Mannerheim Line holds, it will not be able to stop the fatal breakthrough we have caused." As soon as our breakthrough spreads to the flanks, the Finns are finished! ”

Following the position that Timoshenko poked, the commissar saw the breakthrough that Timoshenko repeatedly confirmed - the Vyborg area!

In fact, Timoshenko's strategy was absolutely correct. Once the Soviets captured Vyborg, it meant that the Mannerheim Line was completely cut. Next, the Finnish army, which had lost its natural and geographical advantages, was bound to inevitably rout.

And in front of Vyborg, which Timoshenko was bent on capturing, there was a division of all the Swedish volunteers who came from afar to aid Finland.

In this upcoming showdown, the Soviet Union is the largest power in Eastern Europe and Sweden is the largest power in Northern Europe.

The meeting of the two powers will determine the direction and even the outcome of the Soviet-Finnish war!