The soldiers of the 21st Panzer Division were thus given two hours of precious rest, and under the cover of the 297th Infantry Division, which was following and catching up, the whole division found a place, such as a half-blown building, a civilian house abandoned by the Soviet people, and some even fell asleep in a tank.

After a day and night of continuous advance and intense fighting, the nerves were almost numb.

So this "blitzkrieg" is sometimes not as windy as it seems, and in order to be able to rush to the enemy's line of defense before they are ready, the soldiers spend more often time in tension and exhaustion.

It's just that every soldier knows in their hearts that it is much better to be nervous and tired than to face the enemy's well-equipped fortifications.

The 21st Panzer Division was a little used to this, as they used to do this when they were in the Afrika Korps.

The two hours passed almost in the blink of an eye, and Qin Chuan felt that he had just slept in the corner of the wall when a sharp whistle sounded.

"Take the company as a unit to the logistics officer to get ammunition!" The herald shouted, "Twenty minutes later!" ”

If you think you have twenty minutes to rest, you're wrong, it's just the time to get the ammunition from the quartermaster and then dispense it, and if you're slow, you're sorry, you might have to go into battle with a magazine that's about to run out...... No one would want that, because it basically means that a soldier cannot protect his own life.

The ammunition supply for the first corps will be a little more complicated...... The reason for this is that the first regiment uses MP43.

Other units that did not use the MP43 had only two types of ammunition, one for rifle and machine gun cartridges, and the other for submachine guns and pistols.

The first corps has three types of ammunition: rifle rounds, intermediate power rounds, and pistol rounds.

This delayed the 1st Battalion in the process of collecting ammunition by two minutes, but this did not have any effect, as the 1st Battalion itself was to walk behind the 1st Tank Regiment.

From Verdgach onwards, the German march route was no longer north, but east.

As mentioned before, the Don River has a large bay near Verdach, and Verdach is the inflection point, so the distance between the Don River and the Volga River in this part is the closest, only 55 kilometers.

The German strategic plan was to cross the Don River to the Volga, so that it could build a defensive line north of Stalingrad with the Don and Volga rivers as a defense, as the Soviets did.

This line of defense would divide Stalingrad in two with the Stalingrad Front to the north, completing the encirclement of Stalingrad on three sides.

At first, Qin Chuan thought that it would be difficult to advance along this line, because the Soviet army would not sit idly by and watch itself being divided into two and surrounded.

But when I set foot on this road, I found that this was not the case, and the Germans did not encounter the Soviet defenses all the way, only occasionally a few stragglers saw the Germans coming up from a distance and fired a few shots indiscriminately and retreated.

The reason for this, Qin Chuan, believes that this is related to the fact that the Soviet army did not find out the strategic direction of the German army...... The Soviets thought that the Germans would attack all the way north and continue north after reaching Verdac, but they did not expect the Germans to suddenly turn around.

On the other hand, there was a serious shortage of troops in the rear of the Soviet army.

The main forces of the two Soviet fronts were deployed along the Volga, the Don and the passage between the two rivers (the main forces of the Stalingrad Front were deployed along the upper reaches of the Don River, and the Southeastern Front was also deployed along the Volga and the passage between the two rivers).

If it was according to the normal mode of warfare, the German army advanced the Soviet army layer by layer and retreated, then the rear defense line of the Soviet army would not be undefended, but the German army did not take the usual route, and seized an opportunity to break through to the rear of the Soviet defense line and attack the camp at a very fast speed.

This was originally true, because it was common sense that if the Germans could reach the north of Stalingrad, then the whole of Stalingrad would fall into German hands.

The Germans made their way to Kotluban, where they were met with only a battalion of Soviet troops and a few improvised groups of policemen, workers, and unknown civilians.

Such troops, of course, could not withstand the German offensive, and they took only half an hour to capture Kotluban...... It took about that time to get the tanks from the west to the east of Kort Luban.

Kotluban was the middle support point of this line, 26 kilometers west of the Don River and 29 kilometers east of the Volga River, which was very important to the German line, so the German 297th Infantry Division left a regiment to wait for reinforcements from the 6th Army...... The troops of the 6th Army will move more slowly because they need to cross the Don River.

The 21st Panzer Division continued to march eastward, and the picture of this half of the period was a little different, but this did not refer to the resistance of the Soviet army...... There were indeed some Soviet troops in this half, but these Soviet troops were hardly worth mentioning under the dual attack of German tanks and aircraft.

Along the way, the Germans saw more civilians building defensive lines in the trenches, including old men, women and children, dressed in all kinds of clothes, covered in mud and water, and not far away there were tents for them to live and rest at night, and a pot supported by a few iron rods.

When the Germans appeared in front of them, the shock on their faces showed that they were completely unprepared for what was happening in front of them, and a few Soviet soldiers, who were probably overseers, were lying on the ground and had been controlled by the Germans.

This made the German soldiers a little unimaginable, the Germans were all in front of them, and these civilians were still around, as if they were building trenches against them.

However, this is actually quite normal, the Soviets are even in chaos in the command of the army, coupled with the backward communication equipment, it is not a matter to fail to notify in time or omit to notify the people who are building fortifications on the front line to retreat.

"What shall I do with these people?" Werner asked.

"It's easy!" Eberhard's reply: "Let them continue to do it, but in a slightly different direction, not to the west but to the north, understand?" ”

Of course, there is nothing that is not understood, the owners of these trenches have changed, and they were originally used to defend against the Germans, and now they are used to defend against the Soviet troops who may come from the north.

But this was not what the 21st Panzer Division had to do, they handed over the prisoners and others to the 297th Infantry Division, which arrived later, and then continued to advance eastward.

As it was said in the plan before: "Until you see the Volga!" ”