In the early morning of April 21, 1944, the Kalinin-Tver battlefield north of Moscow resounded for days with gunfire, the roar of tank motors, and the "Ula! Ulla! The cry suddenly disappeared without a trace, as if it had never been seen before. Except for www.biquge.info the sporadic exchange of fire between the front lines of the two sides and the scouts, the battlefield was quiet between the wars.

The offensive of the Soviet Red Army, stopped!

But all the senior Allied officers on the battlefield knew that the fighting near Moscow was not over, and it had not even really begun. The fierce fighting from April 5 to 21 was only a prelude to the Battle of Moscow.

"The USSR didn't fight? Could it be because of the offensive of Army Group Center? ”

On the morning of the 21st, the Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, Reich Marshal Hersmann, was finally convinced that the Soviet troops on the Kalinin-Tver battlefield had stopped the offensive. He asked Marshal Guderian, the 1st Quartermaster, "Can you confirm the retreat of the Soviet troops on all fronts?" ”

If the Soviets retreated on all fronts, then the German Army Group North should immediately launch a counterattack, lest the Soviet Army Group on the Northern Front retreat to Moscow unharmed. However, if the Soviet army did not retreat on all fronts, it was better for the German Army Group North to stay on its stomach, so as not to frighten the Soviets and not dare to engage in a decisive tank battle with the Germans west of Moscow.

If the JS-2 and T-34/85 were all retracted back to Moscow, Olga's "old white men" and "new white men" would suffer - because Hersmann was still thinking about fighting the United States after taking out the Soviet Union, so he did not want the Germans to suffer too many casualties on the Soviet-German battlefield, otherwise the people's willingness to support the war would be greatly reduced. Therefore, such a fortified city as Moscow, Hesman intends to hand it over to the White Army to deal with.

The combat effectiveness of the White Army was far inferior to that of the German Army, and if the defenders of Moscow were too strong, the possibility of a crushing defeat for the White Army still existed......

Therefore, the battle on the outskirts of Moscow is actually quite difficult to fight now.

"It's not certain yet, the reconnaissance aircraft didn't find anything." Guderian and Hersman also shared the same idea, both wishing to exhaust the Soviet forces as much as possible in the outer operations in Moscow, and he said to Hersman: "And the Soviet troops that cut off the Red October railway line show no signs of retreating...... It was as if they were building fortifications. ”

"Fortifications?" Hersman was puzzled, "Do they want to continue to surround Paulus's army?" ”

"It can't be," said Guderian, "that Paulus was not actually surrounded...... Borovich, east of the Red October railway line, is still in our hands. I suppose the aim of the Soviet army was simply to force Paulus's cluster to retreat north, so that most of its forces could be concentrated on defending Moscow. ”

Guderian guessed the intentions of the Soviet army at once - this is actually not difficult to guess, everyone wants to fight the annihilation war, but what can be done if they can't do it? It is always beneficial to defend Moscow to be able to push the German army back on the northern front.

"But they didn't get there." Hersman pressed his hand to the edge of the large map table, "They're ...... now Gave up? ”

"Possibly." Guderian said, "The ultimate goal of the Soviet army is not to fight us in a decisive battle in the Kalinin-Tver region, and if the goal of forcing our troops to retreat cannot be achieved at a lower cost, it is possible to choose to give up." ”

"Then why are they still stuck on the Red October Railroad?" Hersman pointed to a red circle on the Red October railway line - there was about a Soviet divisional battle group. "They could have evacuated last night, why didn't they leave?"

Guderian shrugged, he didn't quite understand.

If the Soviet troops, stuck on the Red October railway line, retreated, then Guderian would have immediately judged that the Soviet counterattack north of Moscow was over.

But the Soviets did not do this, and not only did the Soviet troops on the Red October railway line not withdraw, but also in Valdai, Andreapol, Toropets, Kuvshinovo, Tornok, Likuslavl and other places, the Red Army showed no signs of withdrawal.

The Soviets seemed to have switched to the defensive on the spot after stopping the offensive, forming a semicircular front. Although such a front did not encircle the coalition Paulus, it was very uncomfortable for Paulus, and if it was not opened, the Paulus group and the German Army Group North would not be able to attack the north of Moscow.

Maybe this is what the Soviet High Command was for?

"You should fight the town of May Day," Guderian said to Hersman after thinking for a long time, "but not to take it down, otherwise it will scare the Soviets." ”

"Deliberately showing weakness?" Hersman asked.

"Yes." Guderian said, "I have studied the statistical tables of the battle reports and the exchange rate of losses from April 5 to the present, and I have found that the superiority of the armored corps over the infantry is weakening. Not only can our infantry easily repel the attack of the Soviet tank group, but even the counterattack of our tank group has a probability of about 75% being repelled by the Soviet infantry defense. ”

The changes in the battlefield situation discovered by the famous generals of the Soviet army were also noticed by the Germans.

"I believe that the high command of the Soviet army also discovered this problem." Guderian said, "They are now deploying infantry in Wuyi Town because of confidence in the infantry's anti-tank capabilities." And we can strengthen this self-confidence of theirs, so that the retreat of the Soviet army on the northern front cluster is likely to be delayed. ”

"Yes," Hersmann, as usual, continued to obey Guderian (Guderian), but he offered an additional suggestion, "Let the Air Force suspend air strikes on the industrial centers of the Volga-Ural region and concentrate on bombing roads, bridges, and transportation hubs in Soviet-controlled areas around Moscow in order to paralyze the mobility of Soviet tank clusters." ”

Air raids on the industrial region of the Volga-Ural began as early as 1942, when the world revolution broke out. However, at that time, German planes were only engaged in harassing bombing, not really strategic bombing.

It was not until the autumn of 1943, after Belarus basically controlled Petrograd Oblast, that the Luftwaffe began to station a large number of airfields in Petrograd Oblast, which were all military airfields of the original Soviet Army, with many numbers and good facilities), and the Volga-Ural industrial zone also entered the "1000 km combat radius" of the Luftwaffe, and the bombing really began.

And now, Hersman is preparing to use the planes that bomb the Volga-Ural industrial zone to disrupt the lines of communication of the Soviet troops around Moscow.

……

Ivan Ivan Wing, commander of the 8th Guards Infantry Division of the Red Army, who was old and had a mustache similar to that of Hitler. Vasilyevich. At this time, Panfilov was riding a Kazakh steed, patrolling the defensive positions in all directions.

His 14,000 Kazakh fighters have not experienced real hard fighting in the past ten days of fighting. Therefore, it was a new force in the 7th Guards Tank Army, so on the night of April 20, it was transferred to a small town called "Wuyi Town" on the Red October Railway Line.

Arriving with the 8th Guards Division was a tank destroyer brigade assigned to the division, the 28th Guards Tank Destroyer Brigade, equipped with 39 SU-57s converted from BT-7 tanks, as well as 4 captured Olga tank destroyers and 1 Panther reconnaissance tank and 1 Cougar armored vehicle.

Among them, the "Olga" tank destroyer was an abandoned car "picked up" on the battlefield, and the panther and the cougar were stolen from the Poles by the "Red De", which had infiltrated behind enemy lines.

Because these 6 captured vehicles all had some shell-piercing shells on them, they became a killer weapon in the hands of Panfilov, specifically calling for Tiger tanks.

But even with 39 SU-57s and 5 armored vehicles with shell-piercing shells, Panfilov knew very well that his troops were about to get into a tough battle.

According to the order of General Fedyuninsky, the 8th Guards Infantry Division had to hold out in the town of May Day for a week before it could break through to the forest to the west at night. However, the Kazakh fighters, who knew that they were going to be caught in a bitter battle, still had high morale, and since last night they have thrown off their arms and worked the muddy ground, and in less than 20 hours, they have renovated the original sloppy fortifications inside and out.

Through the completely oriental faces, Major General Panfilov (who was born near Moscow), a Russian, saw a completely different determination to defend the Soviet Motherland than many Russians!

It is true that the collectivization movement in Kazakhstan, which began in 1932, also hurt many people, hundreds of thousands of people starved to death, and 1.5 million people were exiled for resisting collectivization.

But the Kazakhs preferred to live in the Soviet Union compared to the more brutal Tsarist Russia. After all, the bitter collectivization campaign has passed, and the Kazakhs, like the Russians, are now the masters of the Soviet Fatherland. But if Tsarist Russia was completely restored, the Kazakhs would immediately be reduced to a lowly inferiority.

Because Empress Olga is a little mother of Russia, the protector of the Orthodox Church...... This is something that even the loyal GC-ist Panfilov could not deny in his heart.

Empress Olga's position earned her the loyalty of many Russians and Cossacks (the Cossacks were not a people, in Tsarist times they were considered Russians), established power in a very short time, and also had a large army, turning the Soviet-German war into a de facto Second Soviet-Russian civil war.

But because of the same "Russia first" position, Olga had no appeal to non-ethnic Russians in the Soviet Union - except for Orthodox Russians, there was no one else in the Soviet Union who regarded a tsar as a liberator!

The staunch opposition to the Tsarist question is probably the reason why General Fedyuninsky will now hand over the most difficult and dangerous blocking task to the 8th Guards Infantry Division, a Kazakh-dominated infantry division.

Just thinking of this, the sound of air defense sirens suddenly sounded in the ears of Panfilov, and the German air raid began!

Because the muddy roads affected the deployment of German and French heavy artillery clusters, the Panfilov division was not bombarded by overwhelming shelling, but by a huge attack aircraft group consisting of dozens of Fw-190F and Fw-190G series fighter-bombers and Hs-129 anti-tank attack aircraft.

In addition, more than a dozen Fokker Zero D-type fighters and fighters of the Fw-190A series circled the surrounding airspace, and they were tasked with shooting down any fighter of the Soviet Red Air Force who dared to approach the battlefield.