"Fighter jets haven't arrived yet? The Americans said they gave us 200 P-40 fighters, but I only saw 40! 40 planes! Stalin leaned back in his chair and yelled, angry enough to reach the corridors.

Vatutin, who rushed back to Stalingrad from the front, said with a not very good-looking face: "For the losses of the front, 40 P-40 fighters may only be enough for two days' consumption!" ”

The two of them are talking about the replenishment of fighter jets, but in fact, both of them know that it is not the resources of those dozens of fighters that really matter, but the situation in Ukraine as a whole.

As time passed, Stalin, who lost Moscow, had a weaker grip on the entire Soviet Union.

Sitting in Chelyabinsk, Beria's conviction did not suffer the punishment he deserved. This living example also emboldened other thoughtful people, and seriously challenged Stalin's authority.

At present, about 20 to 30 fighter planes will be detained in the Far East. The rest of the planes were stripped all the way to Chelyabinsk, and only 40 were left that could be allocated to the front.

It is a pity that 40 P-40 fighters are simply not enough for the consumption of fierce air combat. Although there are few Soviet fighters in the skies over Ukraine now, the sky over Stalingrad must be defended as much as possible.

In order to hold Stalingrad, Stalin amassed more than 1,000 combat aircraft nearby. Among them, there are more than 400 old I-16 fighters, and the rest are mostly new fighters such as the Lager-3 and MiG-3.

He also concentrated as many P-40 fighters as possible and deployed them in Stalingrad in order to gain local air superiority.

In fact, this is not a good thing for the front-line combat troops - the supply of materials from Castalin in the rear, Stalin will intensify the supply of materials to the front-line troops.

In the past month, with the collapse of the front-line troops, they have not received the weapons and ammunition they deserve, nor have they received even a single timely support.

Aircraft and tanks were throttled to Stalingrad, and the front-line troops could not even guarantee basic ammunition and could not do it if they wanted to counterattack......

Of course, no one is actually thinking of fighting back. Now that everyone is swarming backwards and running, who has the leisure to stop and fight the Germans?

However, when the front stabilized and the Soviet army planned to hold Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk and other areas, they found that they had not received any replenishment.

There are no reinforcements, no follow-up replenishment, no supplies - how many people when they retreated, there are only as many people now.

At this time, the German army they faced was much stronger than what they had fought before. Because the Germans were massively replenished, including hundreds of tanks, hundreds of aircraft, and the entire Axis fleet!

Therefore, it was impossible to resist the German offensive with just a few dozen fighters and dozens of radio equipment sent by the Americans.

So, in mid-September, the Germans had advanced to the periphery of Donetsk and hit the Pologi area.

Army Group D, which is like a bamboo, has advanced thousands of kilometers in Ukraine at a speed of advancing thousands of kilometers in a month, and with Army Group B, it has successfully pinched four-fifths of Ukraine into its own hands.

Now, the German battle group in the south formed a huge iron pincer, pinching the Soviet troops in the center of the Dnepropetrovsk salient.

As long as the German troops on both flanks squeezed into the middle, the encirclement of the Soviet troops near Dnepropetrovsk could be completed.

Although there are no big names in this encirclement, and there are not too many troops, the 300,000 Soviet troops are also Soviet troops, and it is just a matter of annihilating them.

If we talk about the 300,000 Soviet troops here who were destroyed in the encirclement, the Soviet army would only have about 1 million troops left near the Ukrainian defense line.

Compared with the pre-war troops, it is already considered a loss of more than half. In this case, there is no suspense that the Soviet army will lose the whole of Ukraine.

"Now there is no time to investigate how many weapons and equipment the bastards in the rear have withheld, the most important thing now is to stabilize the front line and stop the decline of the retreat." Rushing back from the front line in Kharkov, without even bothering to eat a bite, Vatutin came to see Stalin.

"Comrade Stalin, the great leader! Now it is the question of Dnepropetrovsk, where the Germans may encircle at any time, and the 300,000 elite cannot be given up without saying that they can give up......" Vatutin, despite the exhaustion caused by his own hurry, admonished Stalin.

Vatutin is a soldier, and he always thinks from the perspective of a soldier. In his opinion, if Dnepropetrovsk is lost, then Kharkov will not have to be defended.

Dnepropetrovsk is already besieged on three sides, and if the city is not abandoned, there is a high probability that the soldiers stationed in the city will be completely surrounded.

The current situation is somewhat complicated, there is a precedent for the Soviet troops in the Kiev encirclement to surrender, and it is difficult to guarantee that Dnepropetrovsk will not choose to surrender after being surrounded by German troops.

Today's Soviet army can be said to be full of soldiers, and Vatutin does not dare to let hundreds of thousands of troops fall into the encirclement again, and then be "wiped out" by the German army overnight.

Since he did not dare to let his troops be surrounded again, in Vatutin's opinion, abandoning Dnepropetrovsk was an imperative choice.

Once the city is abandoned, Kharkiv becomes another isolated city...... The chain reaction of this column made Vatujing very entangled.

It's like a set of dominoes, if you knock one down, it will affect the ones that follow. In the end, the Soviet Union may not even be able to hold Donetsk, and must directly abandon the whole of Ukraine......

"Either risk letting the troops hold Dnepropetrovsk, and as long as they can hold out there for 10 days, we will get a respite......," Vatutin said the suggestion, and he could feel the bitterness on his lips.

"Either let the troops withdraw, abandon the Dnieper defense line, and leave the remaining problems to Kharkov to solve......" Hard-headed, Vatutin finally said both options.

Stalin was silent, he sat in his chair, as if in deep thought - to give up or to persevere, had been lingering in his mind, unable to make a choice for a long time.

Eventually, he said: "Order the defenders of Dnepropetrovsk to stay where they are...... As long as they can hold on for 10 days...... 10 days ......"

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The other one will be made up later, and the dragon spirit is too sleepy......