The plan for launching a feint on Leningrad was developed by the General Staff of the Wehrmacht after repeated study, and the drawing of the main forces of the Soviet Red Army in the Leningrad direction by a feint was a necessary condition for the smooth seizure of Ukraine and the Caucasus oil-producing regions. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

According to the information available to the General Staff, the size of the Soviet Red Army is now very large, and since the population of the Soviet Union is larger than that of Germany, the mobilization capacity of the Bolshevik Party is also stronger than that of the current Junker + Nazi joint system in Germany. Therefore, it is likely that the number of people before the start of the Soviet-German war had already exceeded 8 million, and now it is certainly more than 10 million.

The combined number of the Western, Southwestern, and Northwestern Fronts used to attack Poland, Western Ukraine, and the Baltic was about 4 million, accounting for up to two-thirds of the total number of field units of the Red Army.

In addition, the Bolshevik Party of the Soviet Union was still the Lao Tzu Party of the Third International, and now, under the banner of the world revolution, could call on internationalist fighters to support the world revolution. According to the information available to the German General Staff, many internationalist fighters have already responded to the call and rushed to the Soviet Union.

Although the Soviet Union is not short of manpower at the moment, the banner of the world revolution is as big as that of some internationalist fighters. So the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army built in one fell swoop a dozen pretending Third International Divisions, which could also be put into battle if necessary.

Therefore, even if the units of the Western Front and the Southwestern Front were all annihilated, the Red Army would still have enough forces to defend it. Although the reserve units of the Red Army could not be compared with the elite troops under the command of the Western Front and the Southwestern Front in terms of equipment and training, their numerical superiority could not be underestimated.

The strength of the German army now used on the Eastern Front is the southern, central and northern army groups, with 14 army groups, 4 armored armies, the Polish Defense Army, the Ukrainian Defense Army and the Lithuanian Defense Army, a total of 152 divisions and 122 brigades (the defense army only has brigades and no divisions), a total of 3.95 million people.

Although the number is quite large, 900,000 of the 3.95 million people are the Polish Defense Army, the Ukrainian Defense Army and the Lithuanian Defense Army, these defense forces are not only relatively weak in combat effectiveness, but also have poor mobility, and it is okay to guard their hometowns, and it is not possible to follow the main German army to fight a blitzkrieg.

So the 3.05 million people who could really go on the offensive accounted for about 75% of the German Army's field troops. Moreover, the remaining 900,000 or so Wehrmacht field troops were either fighting in Ireland or stationed in important locations in the Middle East, Guyana, Europe, and the west coast of Africa, and it was difficult to withdraw them for an offensive on the Eastern Front.

As for the question of further mobilization, although it was raised as early as when Hessman was chief of the General Staff. But because the Nazi Party was reluctant to send German women into factories to replace men, the mobilization did not go well.

Moreover, in Germany itself, excluding the Confederate States, more than 8 million people have now been mobilized to join the army - more than 4 million of them in the front-line field forces, most of the rest in the navy, air force, air defense, and logistics agencies, as well as hundreds of thousands of homeland guards and millions of recruits trained in barracks.

Therefore, the potential for further mobilization in Germany is not too great, after all, Germany's population base is just like this, and the number of troops that can be mobilized is certainly not as large as that of the Soviet Union.

Therefore, in the "blue plan" drawn up under the leadership of Hersmann, there was no intention of kicking the Bolsheviks in one fell swoop, nor did it directly attack Moscow's big goals. There are only a few small targets, such as Ukraine, such as the Caucasus oil-producing regions, such as heavy damage to the Western Front and the Southwestern Front.

At the same time, the "Blue Plan" is not a plan for a quick decisive battle, but a preparation for a protracted confrontation. The seizure of Ukraine, the heavy industrial base of the Soviet Union, and the Caucasus, an oil-producing region, are both necessary for protracted warfare.

However, it is not easy to achieve these small goals. After all, Stalin and the Soviet High Command were not three-year-old children, and they didn't have enough to play, and they didn't believe that the Germans wanted to turn Leningrad in the Soviet Union into Petrograd in the Russian Empire.

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"Leader, if Stalin is to be convinced that our goal is to restore the Russian Empire, it is necessary to bring Empress Olga out and rebuild the White Russian army."

Hersmann slowly spoke his thoughts, he picked up the cup on the table, took a sip of coffee, and then said: "And the attack in the direction of Leningrad should be fierce enough, preferably to the outskirts of Leningrad." As long as the tsar's flag could fly over Tsarskoye Village, Stalin could not but believe it. ”

It would be very difficult to attack Leningrad from the Baltic sortie, because in addition to the defense of the Soviet Red Army, Leningrad would also have millions or more of the working Soviet people taking part in the battle -- it has been more than 20 years since the August Revolution, and there are probably not many old people in Leningrad who still remember the benefits of the Tsar, and the "Soviets" educated by the Bolsheviks are the majority of Leningrad!

Therefore, the advance of the Nazi troops under the banner of Empress Olga could not confuse them, but it was still possible to advance from the border of Estonia and the USSR to the village of Pushkin (Tsarskoye Village) on the outskirts of Leningrad, but only a hundred or dozens of kilometers.

"It's better to let Empress Olga herself go back to that...... What Tsarscha Village. Hitler chimed in, "She is a sign that for a part of the Russians, she is the rightful monarch blessed by God." By the way, the Orthodox Church and the Empress can go back together. ”

The return of the empress was, of course, a big blow, and she went back "with God", who was much more popular in Russia than the Romanov dynasty. If Stalin had not taken it seriously, he might have to make it true!

"If Empress Olga were stationed in the Catherine Palace, Stalin would not dare to take it lightly." The Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Kesselring, also agreed with Hitler, and he looked at Hersmann, "I just wonder if the Empress would like to return to the Imperial Village?" ”

Hitler also looked at Hersmann at this time, and Hersmann knew what the two men, and he shrugged his shoulders and smiled: "I will go to Tombea Castle, and I should be able to reach an agreement with Her Majesty the Empress." ”

Tombea Castle is in Tallinn in Baltic State, where Empress Olga was crowned Empress of Russia and was also the Grand Duchess of the Baltic Duchy - and her Grand Duchess was destroyed when the Baltic became a republic.

However, she never officially renounced the Baltic monarchy. When Wilhelm II returned to the German throne, all the German monarchs made them dukes or duchesses, and received at least one castle as their palace. And Empress Olga also took out her own Polo Grand Duchess to talk about things, at first William Sr. ignored her, but after William III ascended the throne, there was a change. In 1941, Olga recognized Germany's annexation of the Grand Duchy of Baltic and made her duchess of Tallinn in the German Empire (no land, only an annuity) and returned to Tombea Castle.

So in early 1942, the Empress moved her permanent residence from Yegenstorff Castle in Switzerland (which was given to her by an American tycoon to change her countdom) to Tombea Castle, close to her homeland.

After discussing the question of how to fool Stalin, the meeting of the High Command continued. There is another important matter to be discussed at today's meeting, that is, the matter of fighting in the Indian Ocean in conjunction with Japan.

This is something that has been agreed for a long time, that the European Combined Fleet and the Japanese Combined Fleet will cooperate to seize Ceylon, Madagascar (controlled by Free France) and other important islands in the Indian Ocean, completely open up the Indian Ocean communication lines, and also seize South Africa as compensation for Japan's occupation of the Dutch East Indies.

Now the Japanese have finally put together a fleet ready to go west to the Indian Ocean, but they have put forward some additional demands -- because the Indian Ocean islands such as Ceylon and Madagascar are under the control of the European Community, and Japan is purely "helping," so it is normal for them to make some demands.

However, the request made by the Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Oshima to Hitler, who had returned from Paris this afternoon, made people laugh and cry, and the Japanese wanted to get the Tiger tank! It's not about a few or dozens of cars to fill the façade, but about copying them in Japan. The Japanese wanted design drawings, prototypes and concessions, and it was said that the Japanese Army was ready to equip several of their tank divisions with Tiger tanks!

The German armored forces of this Tiger tank felt a headache, and the Japanese actually thought that they could handle it, and Hirschmann didn't know what to say.

However, it is not surprising that the Japanese made such a request, because they had observers on the battlefield in Warsaw, and of course they knew how capable the Tiger tank was. And on the night of July 21 and the early morning of July 22, this faulty but powerful tank and the Black Panther tank, which had similar performance, won another "big score" tank battle.

On this night, the armored units of the Soviet 3rd Army and the 9th Army, which tried to flank the "Reinhardt-class armored group", suffered crushing defeats at Ruda and Razimin, respectively. Even with T-34/57 and ZIS-2 anti-tank guns, the German Haw Par was still not something the Soviets could handle.

When the morning sun fell on the plains near Ruda and Razimin in the early morning hours of 22 July, more than 350 charred and twisted metal wreckage, most of them T-34s and KV-1s, were added to the destroyed and irreparable Haw Par and No. 4H tanks, but only 23 of them.

In addition, 4 relatively intact T-34s and 1 KV-1 were captured, and one of them was the killer T-34/57 tank of the Soviet Red Army! (To be continued.) )