After Hitler made Field Marshal Wilhelm von Reeb commander of Army Group South, the situation in Romania did not improve in any way. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

This Marshal Lib, like Rundstedt, was the oldest commander among the German officers. As early as the First World War, Rib had already entered the army as a staff officer in the Bavarian army.

Later, he was awarded the Military Knight of the Order of Merit by Max Josef (the Bavarian equivalent of the Prussian Order of the Blue Max) for his exploits in the First World War, and received the title of knight, entering the ranks of the nobility, whose name was changed by the addition of "Ritter" and the German noble particle "von".

After the end of the First World War, Wilhelm von Reeb remained in the Wehrmacht of the Weimar Republic, one of the elite 100,000 troops.

In 1923, when the Beer Hall Coup broke out, Ribu received orders from his superiors to suppress the Nazi-led coup, and Hitler was arrested and imprisoned for the failure of the coup.

Despite this, Hitler did not have any resentment towards Ribu because of his involvement in the suppression of the beer hall coup, and after the Nazi Party came to power, Ribu was not only not suppressed by the Nazi Party, but was also reused by the Nazi government, and his military rank was promoted from lieutenant general to field marshal, commanding an entire army group.

Whether in terms of experience, seniority, or achievements, Marshal Rib is undoubtedly the best choice to succeed Rundstedt. His qualifications are the highest among the commanders, and he has been in the army for more than 40 years, and he also has a wealth of military experience.

In addition, the Army Group North under his original command won successive victories in the Soviet-German war, and with fewer losses, successfully captured the three Baltic states.

The other two Army Groups, although they also captured some territory, paid a heavy price (the 2nd Tank Group of Army Group Center was encircled and annihilated, and the 11th, 3rd and 48th Panzer Corps of Army Group South were annihilated).

In this comparison, the record of Army Group North is undoubtedly the best among the three army groups.

The commander of the army group with the best record was undoubtedly Marshal Libu.

But if he has a good record, does it mean that he is capable? Not necessarily. Just as test scores do not reflect a person's IQ, temporary victories and defeats do not necessarily reflect a commander's abilities. Even Genghis Khan, a generation of Tianjiao, was defeated in the Battle of the Thirteen Wings, but didn't he later lead the Mongol army across Europe and Asia?

Of course, a general like Libu who can achieve good results is not an idle person, he has rich military experience, participated in two world wars, and can be said to have experienced a hundred battles and seen a lot.

He has accumulated rich experience from many battles, and his military level has been continuously improved, and he is already the highest level among the German generals.

Under his command, Army Group South was able to capture some towns, but at a costly one, not much different from Rundstedt's tenure.

At the time of the fierce fighting ahead, the German rear also began to develop a new tank to compete with the Soviet T-34/85.

After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, due to the fact that German tanks could not confront the Soviet T-34 in terms of artillery armor penetration, armor protection and cross-country performance, they were always at a disadvantage in armored warfare, and even the entire tank army was encircled and annihilated.

The Germans realized the problem, and Hitler personally ordered an investigation of the T-34 to understand the advantages of the tank's design and develop a tank that surpassed the T-34 in terms of gun armor penetration, armor protection, and cross-country performance.

To this end, the Third Reich set up a special investigation team called the "Panzerkommission", which sent them to the Eastern Front to evaluate the T-34 and found that the T-34 had a large number of advantages, including the concept of inclined plane (Glacis_plate) and the installation of inclined armor, which made the T-34 more armored than other tanks.

In addition to this, the T-34 tank used a wider track (with a larger ground contact area than other tanks), which improved maneuverability when driving on soft mud ground.

The T-34/85 is equipped with an 85 mm gun, which is superior in caliber and power compared to tanks of the same generation.

The above three important characteristics are the conclusions made by the Germans after evaluating the T-34, and German experts have specially recorded these characteristics in preparation for the development of a new tank with these characteristics.

At the beginning of December 1941, Hitler asked Daimler-Benz and the Lion to start designing such a tank, and the order required that the tank must weigh 30 to 35 tons of medium tank, numbered VK3002, and that the design should be completed by April 1942.

Soon after, in order to get the tank ready for the battlefield as soon as possible, the German government revised the deadline for the completion of the design, requiring the two companies to complete the design of the new medium tank by February 1942.

This medium tank, numbered VK3002, is the Leopard tank as we know it, of course, at this time, it has not yet taken shape.

Immediately after receiving an order for the design of the VK3002, the two companies began the design of the new tank.

Daimler-Benz designed the T-34 almost entirely as a knock-off, and they sought to resemble the design of the Soviet T-34 tank in terms of body, turret, diesel engine, driving system, suspension system and tracks, so as to achieve the same excellent producibility as the T-34.

The MAN design was in line with traditional German tank design thinking - a sturdy turret mounted on a large, wide body, a gasoline engine, a torsion bar suspension system as before, the driving wheels were set up in front like other German tanks, and the turret was designed by Rheinmetall off-the-shelf turret.

If it were to be based on historical development, the Lion design would have been adopted, because the thing designed by Mercedes-Benz looked too much like the T-34 (it was simply copied) and could hardly be distinguished from the Soviet T-34 on the battlefield.

And this VK3002 (DB) is indeed very producible, but it is not very good in performance, which is not at all in line with the basic law of the Germans requiring slow work and pursuing performance over producibility, and as a result, Mercedes-Benz's plan was not adopted, but adopted the plan of MAN company.

However, it is still unclear which option the German military will adopt in this world, after all, Hitler himself preferred the Mercedes-Benz VK3002 (DB) scheme (although this thing is a copycat of the T-34).

Coupled with the fact that German resources began to lack and the opposing side had an increasing number of tanks, the Germans had to think about the producibility and cost factors.

If you consider it from the perspective of producibility and cost, Mercedes-Benz's solution is undoubtedly the most suitable.