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Chapter 19** The kiss of death

Strikes on important German targets in the Middle East, Turkey, and the Caucasus began at 10 a.m. Gulf time, when most of the Luftwaffe's sortie fighters were returning to the airfield. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

The Army, which had hoped that the Air Force would be able to destroy all obstacles in the way of the attack, was shocked to hear of the failure of the air raid, and the self-confidence of the officers and soldiers who were actively preparing for war sank, and many people suddenly became worried about the prospects of war.

Raqqa City, located at the confluence of the Bailih River and the Euphrates River, is more than 20 kilometers away from Lake Assad, the largest freshwater lake in the Middle East. However, since the beginning of the 39th year, the wars have been fought over the years, and the Japanese army has repeatedly looted, massacred and enslaved the people after the occupation, resulting in most of the land being barren and the population of the cities and towns has dropped sharply from more than 30,000 to more than 2,000.

In a two-story West Asian-style earthen and stone building near the mosque in the east of the city, Field Marshal Rundstedt, commander of the Wehrmacht's Middle East Army, was standing in front of a stone wall, looking up at the staff officers marking on the map the walls built by the Anjia Army, mainly the depth of the walls and the location of the exposed anti-aircraft guns.

Next to Rundstedt, Field Marshal Listter, commander of Army Group A, and Field Marshal Manstein, commander of Army Group B, had serious expressions, and after the news of the failure of the air force raid reached the headquarters, every general knew in their hearts that the attack launched tonight would be a hard-fought battle.

Army Group A, under the command of General Kleist's 1st Panzer Army and General Luff's 17th Army, was tasked with breaking through the strong defensive line built by the Anjia Army along both sides of the Euphrates River, along the river and the main line of the East-West Railway, to Baghdad; Army Group B, commanded by Field Marshal Manstein and under the command of Admiral Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army, Admiral Weyks' Second Army, and Admiral Paulus's Sixth Army, was tasked with breaking through the Tigris line and covering the northern flank of Army Group A, while echoing the operations of the Turkish group.

In the rear of Army Groups A and B, there was a second line of forces, consisting of the Hungarian Second Army, the Italian Eighth Army, the Romanian Third Army and the Bulgarian First Army. In addition, in the Damascus area, there was the Eleventh Army of General Zalmut and the Fourth Army of Romania, ready to cross the Shamiya desert and storm Baghdad from the direction of Anbar.

The total strength of the entire Middle East Army was 62 German divisions, including 15 armored divisions, 10 motorized divisions, and 48 divisions of vassal troops, with a total of 3,500 tanks and assault artillery, 25,000 artillery pieces and mortars, and more than 3,000 combat aircraft.

Looking at the depth of the barrier and the increasing number of firing points on the map, Manstein said with some concern:

"Judging from the information fed back by the air force, the enemy's border barriers not only have as many as three to four layers and spread for more than 10 kilometers, but each fortress is extremely strong, and 500-kilogram aerial bombs cannot cause fatal damage to it, and at the same time, the number of anti-aircraft guns arranged by the enemy is beyond imagination.

"So far, the entire air raid operation, in the attack on the border barrier and the subsequent flight over the area of the crashed warplanes reached an astonishing 900, so many anti-aircraft guns once the flat fire, it will be difficult for our tank forces to make a breakthrough, the war will evolve into the first world war barrier war!"

At this time, because the war in Ukraine and the Don River was going well, Rundstedt was not deprived of his post as commander of Army Group South by Hitler. Feng. Marshal Bloomberg, together with them, broke through Stalingrad, and for a time the scenery was infinite, and he was once again awarded the Knight's Iron Cross.

After Army Group South was secretly transferred to the south, Field Marshal Rommel, who was originally in charge of the Middle East and African theater, was in charge of the war in Africa full-time, took the entire territory of Sudan in one go, and cleared the allied forces in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, and advanced the front to Tanzania and the Congo.

Thanks to the use of a large number of enslaved Soviet and Arab people to build railways and roads, fully ensuring the supply of materials, Rommel steadily and steadily, step by step, without external help, Rommel is very likely to approach the South African border in the coming year, to achieve his "desert fox" prestige.

With the arrival of the various divisions involved in the war on the Eastern Front, Army Group South was renamed the Middle East Army, Field Marshal Bloomberg's Caucasus Cluster resumed the title of Turkish Cluster, and Army Group Center, which had quietly moved south after the decisive progress of the Battle of Moscow, was reorganized into the Caucasus Cluster.

In this war, the Middle Eastern Army was responsible for the southern front, the Turkish cluster was responsible for attacking the northwestern border of Persia from Van in eastern Turkey, and the Caucasus cluster was moving south from the Caspian coast to Tehran, and at the same time the front was directed at Central Asia.

Rundstedt pondered for a long time, and then said to Lister and Manstein: "Tonight we will first carry out two hours of saturation shelling, and then make a tentative attack to find out the enemy's situation...... I have a vague feeling that, just as the intelligence of the Soviet Union has failed terribly, much of our information about South China is outdated! For example, in the scene that just happened, who knows what kind of weapons were used on the other side to make our super-large-scale air raid fail? ”

Born in the 80s of the last century, Lister joined the army at the age of 18, graduated from the Bavarian Military Academy at the age of 32, served in the Bavarian Second Army during the last European war, and after the war successively served as the director of the Dresden Infantry School and the division commander and commander of the Wehrmacht, and maintained a neutral attitude towards the Nazi Party. Five years earlier, Lister had been the commander of the German army cluster that had invaded Austria and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, later the commander of the 14th Army, which took part in the invasion of Poland, and the following year he was the commander of the 12th Army, which took part in the attack on France and was promoted to field marshal. In 40, Lister led the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, and then became the commander of the Balkan occupation forces, this time directly transferred to the Middle East, as the commander of Army Group A.

Lister, who had not experienced the cruelty of the Soviet-German battlefield, said with great confidence:

"The entire border of confrontation between the enemy and the enemy is more than 2,000 kilometers long, and it is absolutely impossible for the enemy to deploy defenses in all locations, especially in the arid desert areas of the south, where the enemy is simply unable to defend for a long time because of the lack of drinking water. Therefore, the seemingly impregnable enemy defense line is in fact full of holes, and the collapse of the enemy will be inevitable under our absolute superiority in forces!

"However, it's better to make a tentative attack tonight, in addition to probing the enemy's details, it can also attract the enemy's attention to the frontal battlefield, so that we can maneuver on the flanks! We must be convinced of the fact that the South Chinese army, which has just experienced the war in East Asia, will absolutely not be able to send so many troops to the Western Front to fill the gaps, and if it is broken through a little, the enemy's entire front will be placed under our front. ”

Rundstedt nodded appreciatively, and was about to speak, when suddenly a mournful air raid siren sounded.

Lister Petter glanced out the window and said disapprehantly: "It must be that the enemy's air force is not to be outdone and is preparing to cross the border to launch a counterattack...... Although we have lost more than 3,000 fighters in today's operation, we still have more than 9,000 fighters, and we have absolute air superiority. ”

Rundstedt very much agrees with this point of view, and has no intention of withdrawing in the slightest.

Manstein felt a panic in his heart for no reason, and the keen sixth sense he had developed from the battlefield prompted him to grab the hands of Rundstedt and Lister and say loudly: "No matter what, since the air raid sirens are sounding, we should take shelter......

Manstein asked the staff officers in the war room to quickly pack up their things, and then carried the two marshals and ran out quickly, Manstein followed the struggling Rundstedt and Lister into a newly built air-raid shelter more than 200 meters away, and took the elevator to the second basement floor, and the uneasy feeling in his heart disappeared.

Lister was very annoyed, and was about to say a few sarcastic words, when suddenly he heard a huge explosion, the whole ground was like a sieve sifting rice, trembling wildly, the sediment and dust fell downward, and the huge shock wave from the ground actually caused the electric light above the basement to explode, and the bomb shelter was panicked.

It took about two minutes or so for the earth to calm again, but the entire basement was filled with smoke and coughing.

It is not known who lit the candle and the light was restored in the basement.

Manstein lifted his crooked military hat, patted the dust off his body, and walked briskly outside. Due to the huge tremor that caused the elevator to fail, Manstein reached the entrance of the air-raid shelter on the first floor of the stairs and was immediately stunned by the scene in front of him - the headquarters where they were previously located had been razed to the ground, and the two-story building made of stone in the style of West Asia had become a ruin, and it was hard to imagine what it would be like if they were still inside.

Lister came to Manstein's side, and when he saw the terrible situation of the command, he was stunned and his face turned pale.

Rundstedt, who was helped down to the entrance of the air-raid shelter by the staff officers, was glad that he had survived the disaster, and pointed to the ruins and asked puzzledly: "What kind of weapon is this?" Could it be the enemy's high-altitude bombers? What are our Air Force and Air Defense doing? ”

Rundstedt's voice fell, and everyone was still thinking, when a loud noise came from the northwest again.

The three marshals glanced at each other, and immediately cautiously came to the high ground behind the air-raid shelter, only to see a huge mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke rising from the direction of the airport, thick smoke billowing out, and explosions one after another.

Just when the three of them looked at each other in shock, the military camp where the first armored cluster was stationed on the banks of the Euphrates River in the south of the city heard a loud bang again, and a huge pillar of smoke soared into the sky.

At this time, the communications staff officer quickly reported that the airport and the barracks had been attacked by a mysterious missile with a flaming tail. Among them, the missile at the airport happened to hit the oil depot, causing the aviation fuel to catch fire and explode, and the sputtering flames ignited the ammunition depot and hangar, and then the violent explosion destroyed the planes on the airport, so the momentum was so big.

However, the missile heading for the barracks deviated more than 30 meters from the barracks, and although it also caused nearly 100 officers and men to be killed and wounded, relatively speaking, the losses were much smaller.

The three of them were almost certain at this time that the South China side had an ultra-long-range attack weapon, and Manstein suddenly remembered an experimental weapon that was being carried out in China, and let out a cold sweat and said loudly:

"This is an offensive rocket, and I and the commander of the SS, Reinhard. When Field Marshal Heydrich communicated, he told me that we in Germany are developing this weapon at the rocket base in Peneminde, and the latest A-4 rocket has been successfully developed, the previous model A-3 rocket weighs 750 kilograms, has a diameter of 0.7 meters, and is 6.5 meters long, which can be loaded with high-energy warheads and fired at targets more than 100 kilometers away. It is clear that the South Chinese side has mastered this weapon and has put it into practical use, and now they are attacking us with this rocket! ”

Rundstedt suddenly realized:

"You mean von Brown and von Brown. What research is Braun's team working on? Dornberg was a captain when he was asked to lead the development of rocket weapons, but the Führer appointed him commander of the Penemünde Rocket Development Center and Test Base, with overall responsibility for rocket development, production and troop training of the Ordnance Bureau.

"As far as I know, the intended target of the A4 rocket is a range of 175 km, a maximum height of 80 km, and a payload of 1 ton. And the enemy's weapon, perhaps far exceeding our A4 rocket in range and power, it seems that our intelligence department is seriously derelict in its duties, and even knows nothing about such important information. ”

Manstein said: "I propose to report the situation to the Führer immediately...... Alas, the enemy had such weapons that could attack us from a great distance, and we could not return fire, and now things are difficult! ”

"Oops!"

Lister's face changed drastically, and he said urgently: "Since the enemy can attack us more than 250 kilometers away from the national border, then naturally he can attack any target within this distance...... The Baku oil field is in danger! ”

Rundstedt and Manstein looked at each other, both feeling a hint of fear in each other's eyes.

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ps: Since there are citations in this chapter, I wrote more than 900 words, don't say that the Son of Heaven cheats money!

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