August 18, 1942, 10 a.m. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

The commander of the Western Front of the Soviet Union, General Pavlov, stood in front of the huge map with his hands behind his back and remained silent and did not speak. All around him, there were cheers that rang out one after another.

"Warsaw! Ulla! Poland! Ulla! World Revolution! Ula ......"

Almost everyone in the headquarters was cheering, and some people had found vodka from somewhere.

Their joy was justified, because the troops of the German 6th Army, which had been guarding northwest of Warsaw last night, suddenly retreated! This reactionary army, which had fought hard for more than two months with the Red Army's Western Front around Warsaw and inflicted heavy casualties on the Red Army, withdrew from the city of Warsaw and surrendered the victory of the Battle of Warsaw to the great Soviet Red Army.

The first major victory of the world revolution has now finally been won by the officers and men of the Western Front!

But at this time, the commander of the Western Front, Comrade Pavlov, was not at all happy, and his brows were tightened more and more, as if he was not a victorious general, but a prey who had fallen into a trap.

On the map, the latest development of the battle situation has been marked in detail, and the position of the Western Front is now a huge salient, as if it has crashed headlong into the German battle line, and has forced a big hole by brute force.

However, the Lviv-Carpathian Province (Poland)-Lesser Poland Province to the south of the salient remained largely under German control. The offensive of the Southwestern Front on Lviv also failed because its forces were transferred to reinforce Leningrad.

To the north of the Polish salient, East Prussia-Lithuania-Baltic and other areas were also completely under the control of the German army. The Germans on the Northern Front even launched a fierce assault on Leningrad at the time of the Warsaw crisis, and now they are encircling Leningrad. This may indicate that the German army on the Northern Front was quite abundant and fully capable of reinforcing the Warsaw battlefield. But why didn't the Germans come back to help? Was it really just an attempt to force the Red Army to withdraw its troops from Warsaw by attacking Leningrad?

What the hell are the Germans doing? Do you really want to treat the Polish salient as a big pocket and eat the Western Front in one bite? That's too much of an appetite, isn't it? The Western Front now has more than a million people, and the reserve fronts in Belarus and Smolensk are now in the millions! Although the Southwestern Front was weakened a little, it still had a million men.

How could three large clusters with a total strength of almost 4 million men now be so close together that they could be swallowed up by the Germans in one gulp? Swallowing nearly 4 million Red Army troops in one bite? Even if you can swallow it, you can't digest it, right?

Or was the goal of the Germans really Leningrad? Pavlov again turned his attention to Leningrad, and the Germans and Finns had now completed the encirclement of Leningrad.

It's a big city of two or three million people! If it is besieged for several months, there is a good chance that food and reserves will be exhausted, and so many people will have no food to eat, and the city will not be able to hold it. Leningrad is a city that cannot be lost, so the Supreme High Command will definitely launch the Leningrad Relief Operation in the autumn or winter of this year, and Germany will fight a decisive battle with the Red Army near Leningrad.

In addition to the Polish salient and Leningrad, the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus on the southern front were also likely to be targeted by the Germans. The Caucasus is especially dangerous, it is the most important oil-producing region of the USSR, and although the second Baku oil field has been developed, Baku and Grozny still account for 50-60% of the total oil production of the USSR, and once it is seized by Germany, the fuel supply of the Soviet mechanized troops will have to be cut in half! And the fuel available to the German army will increase by more than 20 million tons.

As an expert in mechanized warfare, Pavlov knew very well what an additional supply of 20 million tons of oil a year meant for Germany.

If the Germans had spent all of these 20 million tons on the army, they would have been able to increase the size of their mechanized forces by more than 300%!

The Soviet Union, on the other hand, will have to reduce the size of its mechanized troops due to lack of fuel, and then the Soviet army's mechanized troops will not only be at a qualitative disadvantage, but will also lose their numerical advantage.

It is clear that the Soviet Union is now slipping into total strategic passivity. And the occupation of Warsaw, instead of turning passivity into initiative, made the strategic situation of the USSR even more passive!

Because Warsaw is the capital of Poland, it is a city with great influence in Europe and the world. Moreover, Warsaw is the most important revolutionary achievement from the outbreak of the world revolution to the present day, and the liberation of Warsaw was a great encouragement to the Soviet Union and the working people of the world.

So as soon as Warsaw fell into the hands of the Soviet Union, the Red Army had to hold it as long as possible - and the working people of the whole world craned their necks to watch! If Warsaw had been recaptured by the Germans within a few days of the liberation of Warsaw, would this world revolution have failed? How discouraged will the working people be then?

And to hold on to Warsaw as much as possible, then the more than a million troops of the Western Front would not have to do anything else, just dig trenches and squat pits around Warsaw. This is tantamount to the Germans trapping the entire Western Front with an empty city of Warsaw!

As for the Western Front, which occupied Warsaw, to make persistent efforts to fight Berlin, 500 kilometers away, Pavlov could not think of it now.

At this time, the excited voice of military commissar Bulganin came from behind him: "Comrade Pavlov, Comrade Beirut of the Polish Bolshevik Party has just called and said that the Central Committee of the Polish Bolshevik Party and the Polish Revolutionary Government want to move to Warsaw as soon as possible, and Comrade Beirut also wants to hold a grand military parade and the celebration of the liberation of Warsaw in Warsaw. ”

The current leader of the Polish Bolshevik Party is named Bolesław. Beirut. He was a lucky man, he was in the top echelons of the Polish Bolshevik Party before the Third International ordered the banning of the Polish Bolshevik Party, and he should have been shot. Luckily, however, he was arrested by Pilsudski's police and imprisoned in a Polish prison, where he was sentenced to five years in prison.

Since he was in Pilsudski's prison, he was no longer under the control of the NKVD of the USSR. So in the most miserable years of the Polish Bolshevik Party, he was in peace and in his cell in Pilsudski's prison.

In 1938, when the Great Purge was in the limelight, he was released from prison. At this time, Germany had not yet invaded the Soviet Union, and naturally he would not be lured by Natalie to join the anti-G-Naked Polish National Socialist Party. So he wandered through Polish society for more than a year, and when the Germans invaded, he fled to the east bank of the Bug River, where he fell into the hands of the liberating Soviet Red Army.

However, at this time, although Stalin had not yet planned to launch a world revolution, he had already saved his mind to turn against Germany. So Comrade Beirut was taken to Moscow, where he received special supplies and housing according to the standards of the leaders of the fraternal parties, but he did not allocate a wife, because he came to Moscow with his wife.

In 1942, when Stalin was preparing to revive the Polish Bolshevik Party, he found that other old Bolsheviks with similar qualifications to Beirut had either been shot by the Soviet Union, or had betrayed the revolution and followed the Germans, and only Beirut had a comfortable life in Moscow. So the promising job of the great leader of Poland cheapened him.

.......

"Oh," Pavlov replied, looking back at Bulganin, and suddenly said something very disheartening: "Comrade Military Commissar, should we not discuss the question of the defense of Warsaw?" ”

"Defend Warsaw?" Bulganin was stunned.

"yes, it's a very urgent matter." Pavlov nodded, and said with a serious expression, "Because the enemy has not yet been defeated...... We underestimated the military strength of the Germans, they were stronger than we thought, and they would soon launch a counterattack. I think we should be ready to move on to strategic defense. ”

"Strategic defense?" Bulganin was able to figure out what strategic defense meant. "Comrade Pavlov, do you think we don't have the strength to continue the offensive to the west or to the north? Perhaps we should attack north, liberate Danzesk, and encircle the entire German Army Group North. ”

Pavlov shook his head and said: "This is impossible, it cannot be done, and there is no point, because the control of the Baltic Sea is firmly controlled by Germany." Even if we take Danzig, we will not be able to talk about encircling the German Army Group North. ”

After the occupation of Warsaw, the Western Front was used to attack Danze in the north, which was a plan proposed in the "Great Thunderstorm Plan". The premise of this plan was that the German army would be massively annihilated in the Battle of Warsaw, and at the same time, the Red Air Force would gain superiority over the Luftwaffe and blockade the Baltic Sea from the sky.

But now these two conditions simply did not exist, the losses of the Germans in Warsaw were not significant, and air superiority was also achieved by the Germans.

Pavlov said: "And now the Western Front can no longer attack, we have thrown too many forces into Poland." So much so that there was a shortage of troops in Leningrad, Ukraine and the Caucasus.

And our situation in Poland for more than two months has shown that we do not have the strength to liberate Poland and Germany in one fell swoop, and we must abandon the idea of a quick victory and weaken Germany with a protracted war of attrition.

A protracted war of attrition will be in full swing in all directions, including Leningrad, Ukraine and the Caucasus, so it is impossible for us to put more than 300 thousand troops on the Warsaw-Smolensk line for a long time. Therefore, we must be prepared to carry out defensive operations in Warsaw with fewer troops, and to turn Warsaw into a flesh mill that consumes the living strength of the German army! This is a little opinion that I have as commander of the Western Front about the Polish battlefield and the Soviet-German theater as a whole. (To be continued.) )