"The younger brother of the commander of the 17th Armored Division, was it you who arranged to go to battle?" Guderian asked Dietrich, the party representative of their headquarters, in a serious tone.

The two stood at the door of the church, looked at each other, and then Dietrich waved his hand helplessly: "Okay, I lost." Yes, I admit, Masco was sent by me to be deliberately captured. We had already planned that 17 of them would deliberately carry only a small amount of ammunition, and then find a well-covered location to open fire on the Soviets at a long distance, and finally pretend that they were forced to take prisoner. Then, on our side, we announced to the public that he had died honorably. ”

"Why? Major General Webb's younger brother, I have an image of him, he should be a major officer, right? Guderian was a little puzzled: "Why let him be captured?" ”

"We faked the identity of a machine gunner, but rest assured, he will regain his identity and rank when he arrives in Moscow." Dietrich smiled and gave Liguderian an explanation that was not an explanation.

"Is this what you SS have arranged?" Guderian thought for a moment, and then shook his head again: "Forget it, it shouldn't be the arrangement of the Waffen-SS, this is a plan from a higher level, right?" ”

Dietrich nodded, he liked to communicate with smart people like Guderian, and he didn't have to say more nonsense to understand his side of things.

"Worthy of being the Führer's confidant," Dietrich said of the highly private title: "This is the Führer's business, although I can't tell you the details for the time being, sorry, even within the SS, not many people know about it." ”

"I understand that." Guderian nodded, "I'm just going to confirm why Masco brought someone to that position." ”

After all, Guderian also had an understanding of Webb's operational deployment, and Major General Webb should not have made such an arrangement as allowing troops to appear in an arc area where Soviet troops were concentrated. In addition, his younger brother Ma Cisco was also the party representative of Webb's division, and his status was important, and he was generally responsible for political work, and rarely interfered in military affairs, let alone personally led the troops to fight.

"Just by the position of a small detachment of troops, it can be judged that there is a problem, and General Guderian really lives up to his name." Dietrich laughed and applauded.

"So, I may ask, does your arrangement have any impact on the battle situation? You know, this kind of military action often has a great impact on my command. Speaking of this, Guderian changed his tone and asked back to the original topic: "Will this help to clear the Soviet troops east of Smolensk?" ”

Just this afternoon, Guderian suddenly received a report that he was using the few captured Soviet broad-gauge trains at the Orsha railway station to arrest them

At 2:30 p.m., the German logistics unit, which was transporting supplies from the rear to this forward supply depot, encountered a sudden roar of artillery.

A swift and intense artillery fire inflicted horrific casualties on the Germans near the station, and also blew up all the trains they had captured as scrap metal. The whole process took less than 10 seconds, and after a short shelling, everything fell silent again. The surviving Germans immediately organized search teams and alert groups, but they did not find out the surrounding enemy forces, and they did not understand what kind of artillery could pour so much ammunition in such a short period of time and move immediately.

Reports of the use of new artillery by the Soviets were quickly reported to the command of the 2nd Panzer Army, but Guderian was equally puzzled. He sent a telegram to General Hult of the 3rd Panzer Army, but he said that he had not encountered such Soviet artillery.

In other words, Guderian's troops won the lottery and became the first target of the Soviet army to take out this weapon against it.

This makes Guderian still feel a lingering worry.

According to the intelligence provided by the logistics troops, the Soviet army should be equipped with an equipment similar to the German self-propelled artillery, otherwise it would be impossible to quickly transfer and evacuate after the shelling. In addition, compared to other artillery, including the self-propelled guns used by the Germans, this self-propelled gun of the Soviet army can quickly pour a large amount of explosives into the target area, causing a very effective one-time strike.

Can bet a lot of firepower at once and quickly leave before being fired by counter-attackers. This is simply the nemesis of Guderian's armored forces!

In the face of this kind of effective weapon with ferocious firepower, large killing range, and can destroy dense formation troops in a large area, suppress the opponent's firepower system, and destroy the enemy's fortifications, Guderian basically has no good way to deal with it.

In the face of such a cannon so powerful that it ignores most of the fortifications, all he can do is keep attacking, giving up defense, and treating offense as the best defense, as he has always done before.

Guderian said frankly to Dietrich: "We speculate that the Soviet army should be equipped with a self-propelled artillery that is far more powerful than our army, and if we do not clear the Soviet army in front of us as soon as possible, find out their artillery units, and figure out what weapons the other side uses, our army will be very passive." ”

"This is no problem, let the troops who found relevant intelligence submit a report to the wolf's den, and the command will help analyze the new weapons of the Soviet army, I believe it won't be long before you can get the relevant data of this weapon." Dietrich confidently agreed.

In fact, Guderian had already arranged for the interrogation of the high-ranking generals among the captives. It's just that among the hundreds of thousands of captives, not one of them asked why. It is enough to see how much secrecy the Soviet army has put into this secret weapon.

Now, what he can count on is the command, which has always been known to be extremely capable of intelligence gathering. I heard that the high command could even get information about the Pearl Harbor base, the most important military base of the US military in the Pacific, and then send it to the Japanese, which helped the Japanese win a great victory.

Presumably, it shouldn't be difficult to get information about this weapon.

In fact, at that time, the Soviet army itself had only a total of 7 prototypes of this secret weapon, and formed the only special independent artillery company, which was 36-year-old Captain Ivan Andreevich Felelov. Due to extreme secrecy, even the insiders of this artillery company did not know the official name of the secret weapon. Only one of the letters К on the gun carriage was visible.

And this independent artillery company, equipped with secret weapons, happened to be incorporated into the Western Front of the Soviet Union. Don't look at Pavlov's poor fighting, but before the war began, the Western Front was also known as the most elite and best-equipped unit in the Soviet Union, and there were secret weapons, of course, they were rationed.

It's a pity that this weapon didn't work in the previous big war, and it didn't even have time to show its face. It was not until Timoshenko arrived at the Western Front that the special separate artillery battery, which had been in the rear of the Front, was transferred to the area around Smolensk to carry out operational orders.