The rain in summer is like the temper of the Russians, straightforward, bold and unreserved. With lightning and thunder, heavy rain poured down, and it was easy to walk outside, even if most of the whole journey was by car, and when you came back, you couldn't help but get wet and embarrassed. This kind of weather is not uncommon in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Western Europe and North America. Normally, such heavy rains do not last long, and once the weather clears, the scorching sun will quickly dry the ground and make it suitable for military operations. After overnight discussions, they finally decided to adopt the strategy of active defense and waiting for an opportunity to attack, and switched to positional defense in the Baltic coastal area where heavy rain came, while in eastern Lithuania and western Belarus, the armies continued to advance towards the set target, among which the US 3rd Army and the French Expeditionary Force had approached Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania defended by the Soviet Army, and the US 2nd Army, The 1st Army of the British Expeditionary Force and the 3rd Mechanized Division of the Polish Army were to reach the western outskirts of Minsk.

On the night that German Field Marshal and Temporary Adviser to the Allies, Manstein, arrived at the headquarters of the Allied Operational Cluster on the North Road, the Allied front, which stretched for thousands of kilometers, was unharmed, and this situation lasted until dawn the next day. With almost out-of-body consternation, the generals hurried to the command room, but when they carefully analyzed the situation and received a follow-up report from the front, they were immediately annoyed by the recklessness of the officers on duty - it turned out that the Dawn Offensive launched by the Soviets in those areas was only a tactical counterattack on a regimental scale, aimed at taking down the valuable positions they had previously lost, and they cooperated with this counterattack with only divisional fire support at best, and not many armored troops participated in the battle. By the morning, the confirmed report was sent back from the front, four of the five positions attacked by the Soviets had been lost, and the Soviets had basically stopped their offensive after capturing those positions, and the only positions that had not been lost were directly supported by artillery and tank units.

Later, at the request of the army units, the front-line combat units of the British Air Force braved the rain to send several Spitfire fighters to conduct low-altitude visual observations, and the area of their activities included the opposite side of the forward position of the northern combat cluster and part of the depth of the Soviet army, and no signs of large-scale Soviet troops were observed. What did that Nazi marshal say yesterday? The Soviet attack was simply imaginary to him, and he was as frightened by the Soviets as those German [***] officers! Well, he's still sleeping in his room? ”

Bradley looked at his British partner with a smirk, knowing that the two world wars had given these European generals a strong subjective and emotional attitude towards each other, and that it was not possible to reconcile them in a few words. However, the official commander should have the authority of the real commander, and he said a little coldly: "I will let him rest in the room, and call him again if he needs his assistance, lest we have not defeated the real enemy, and the rear headquarters will become a battlefield!" ”

The generals heard his unpleasantness from Bradley's tone and words, and immediately put away the words that were originally going to mock Manstein, and General Petit, who had two French divisions under his command, changed the topic and said: "Judging from the current situation, the rain in northeastern Poland and the whole territory of Lithuania is heavier, which is not conducive to the march of troops in night battles, and the northwest of Belarus is less affected by rain, and there is no rain in some places, should we take this time to organize the first attack on Minsk, first, to test the defensive deployment of the Soviet army there, The second is to attract the attention of the Soviet high command so that our front can safely survive this continuous rainy weather. ”

Bradley accepted it when he saw it, there was no need to worry about the problem just now, he nodded and said: "This is a good idea, it would be better if we could contact the troops on the southern front to cooperate with the offensive, so that we are very likely to take full control of the southern part of the Soviet Union by the end of August, and then rush to build a strong aviation base, so as to carry out strategic bombing of the Soviet army in the Urals and the industrial areas east of the Urals." Without these major industrial resources, they would be able to refine enriched uranium at a much slower rate, and by the beginning of next spring – perhaps not necessarily by then, the desperately troubled Soviet Union would collapse. ”

As the representative of the 60,000 British Expeditionary Force in the Allied North Route Cluster Headquarters, General Cullen said with confidence: "Our offensive strategy is much wiser than that of Germany fighting the Soviet Union in 1941, because by identifying the enemy's weak underbelly, we will certainly be able to achieve a strategy that our predecessors have not been able to achieve...... General Petit, how glorious it would be to stand in Moscow as a victor one day, and you will surpass the Emperor Napoleon in your achievements! ”

Fortunately, it is known that Napoleon, the greatest military commander of French history, was defeated by the European anti-French alliance consisting of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria, etc., and was finally exiled to the distant island of St. Helena. The French general replied hatefully: "In my mind, no one can surpass the Emperor Napoleon, that is a glory that no one can copy!" ”

The atmosphere was a little awkward, and Bradley, who only had to bury his head in commanding the US military units during World War II and did not worry about this kind of chicken woman problem, was decisively depressed, and he simply turned around and walked to the corner of the command room to explain to the US military staff officer about the coordination and liaison with the South Road cluster.

On this day, Manstein did not enter the Allied command room, but stayed in the room with his assistant to read a book and read the newspaper, and the Polish newspaper delivered that day carried some unclassified news about the war as usual, and the words were full of optimism, as if the Allied strategic bombing had completely destroyed the industrial base of the Soviet Union in more than two months. Compared with Germany in its heyday, the Soviet Union in 1946 was less than adequate in terms of oil production, and although a large number of machinery and equipment dismantled from Germany could improve the scale of industry, the difference in specifications also caused some inefficiencies and waste.

"In the face of a full-scale offensive from the West, the Soviets did not organize a really big campaign of sufficient weight, such a situation is really abnormal, they should not have lost much of the main force, judging by the situation at the end of the war, they have at least six million well-equipped and experienced standing troops, and there should not be much change in just one year, six million...... Are they all pushed back to Russia? Manstein muttered under his breath.

In the case of the Soviet-German war, when it was almost impossible for a small lieutenant to have the opportunity to discuss strategic issues face-to-face with the field marshal, Hans hid his pride and seriously helped to analyze: "With the Russian surname, no matter how strong the enemy is, they will not be afraid, and they may have spent a considerable part of their energy on dispersing industrial facilities for some time before, and by the way, allowing the Allies to lengthen the supply lines in the continuous advance -- this should be the successful experience they have gained in the war with us!" ”

Manstein nodded, and with his finger dipped his coffee in a sketch of a map of Eastern Europe on a clean table, a skill that probably every German general who had fought on the Eastern Front possessed, because they had put a great deal of thought into the same map, and had struggled and struggled with it.

"If I were the commander of the Soviet army, I would try to avoid the coastal zone where the Allies have absolute superiority, and from eastern Lithuania to Belarus and the Ukrainian plain are all open terrain conducive to the operation of mechanized corps, while the Allied fleet has not yet entered the Black Sea, the southern flank of this decisive battle should be the coast of the Black Sea, cutting into Romania and Hungary along southern Ukraine, and cutting into Hungary from western Ukraine, to carry out a decisive outflanking and annihilation war against the Allied South Road Group, as for the northern route, it is likely to be just a diversion war."

Looking at the arrows on the coffee map on the table, the situation of the big battlefield was clear at a glance, and Hans said with admiration: "This is indeed a combat method that the Soviet army is very good at, they estimate that they have completed the combat deployment and are only waiting for the offensive at dawn." ”

"From our German standpoint, this defeat of the Allies is not necessarily a bad thing." "This war will not necessarily end with the complete destruction of one of the two camps, but will probably end with both sides suffering heavy losses and being unable to afford to fight, and confronting each other with the deterrence of atomic bombs," Manstein said quietly. ”

"Wouldn't we, Germany, become a buffer zone for them?" Hans asked worriedly.

It was a sharp and real question, and Manstein looked up out the window, the incessant rain creating an indistinguishable scene between day and night, and the flashes between the clouds were like the most powerful explosions on the battlefield. As you can imagine, the sandy roads have accumulated puddles, which have had an equal effect on both warring parties, but after four years of fighting in the Soviet-German war, it is clear that the Soviet army is better suited to this environment. After thinking for a long time, the German Field Marshal said in a very low voice: "With the present situation of Germany, whether it is an appointment or a struggle, it will eventually become a victim of the war, and what we can do is to make this sacrifice as small as possible, and at the end of the war it will be in a position of hope for the future." ”

5 hours later, Western Ukraine.

Dawn is the time when normal people are most sleepy, and it is also the time of the Soviet offensive during World War II. This time, the Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal Rokossovsky invested more than 8,000 artillery pieces and rocket artillery to bombard the positions of the US 1st Panzer Army, the 4th Army and the 2nd Corps of the British Expeditionary Force on the other side of the Sherett River with ferocious firepower for an hour and a half. The Soviet ground forces also launched a river-crossing offensive with more than 1,200 combat vehicles and the elite 2nd and 7th armies, and the Battle of Transnistria began!

While the northern part of Eastern Europe is suffering from heavy rains, eastern Ukraine is still sunny to cloudy. Under the condition that the Soviet army's vanguard tank unit crossed the river in a short period of time and successfully occupied the riverbank position of the American and British troops, at this time more than 100,000 American and British officers and soldiers were completely stunned by the opponent's sudden and ferocious artillery fire, and the troops in the forward position were either annihilated by the Soviet army or retreated back in embarrassment, and the deep troops were ready to launch a river-crossing attack in a few days, so the layout of positions and camps mainly took into account the offensive level rather than a resolute defensive battle. The Soviet troops crossing the river formed a number of sharp tank attack groups, like a sharp dagger that pierced the Allied positions, dividing more than 100,000 American and British troops in several areas. After daybreak, more than 3,000 Soviet warplanes launched a large-scale assault on Allied airfields in western Ukraine and northeastern Romania in more than 10 waves. On the southern front, although the Allied [***] team could not be supported by superior navies, the powerful air force basically made up for this shortcoming. The U.S. military alone has committed nine air wings, and the British army also has four air wings, including a fighter wing equipped with the "Shooting Star", and the British Royal Air Force believes that their jet fighters are superior to the German ME-262, and in the air battle on the Eastern Front, one is equivalent to three or four of the best propeller fighters of the Soviet army. Although the Soviet offensive came suddenly, the vigilance of the American and British air forces was still better than that of the army, and they quickly took off more than 400 fighters after dawn, which was not much different in number from the Soviet fighters who arrived on the battlefield in the first two waves, and the two sides launched a needle-to-needle battle at medium and high altitudes, and the large groups of Soviet attack planes and light bombers represented by the Il-2 and PE-2 tried their best to avoid the interception of the Allied fighters and pounced on those field airfields located in depth. As a result, many Allied planes were destroyed on the airfields before they could take off, and the air defense facilities around these Allied airfields were also heavily attacked by air raids and suffered heavy losses.

After unexpectedly reversing the air supremacy in the local battlefield, Soviet engineers quickly erected pontoon bridges at many locations on the Dniester River, and a total of more than 4,000 Soviet tanks, self-propelled guns, and mechanized units fighting in armored vehicles, trucks, and motorcycles rushed out of the woods and artificially sheltered assembly areas, and inexorably crossed the river into the western region of Ternopil Oblast, which had been occupied by the United States and British Allied forces for less than a week. At the same time, Soviet guerrillas lurking in the Allied-occupied areas scattered in all directions, sabotaging the Allied communications and transportation facilities in a flexible and changeable manner, and even directly attacked many Allied headquarters that were not sufficiently defended, causing the command and liaison of the Allied combat cluster on the southern route to fail. On the same sunny morning, the Soviets launched a counterattack from the Nikolaev line in southwestern Ukraine with more than 2,000 tanks and more than 300,000 officers and men, and they easily crushed the American forces that had occupied the port of Odessa two days earlier, and quickly approached Romania from land. Looking down from the sky dominated by Soviet fighters, an armored column that meandered for dozens of kilometers was rushing towards the rightmost flank of the Allied front...... In an unnamed position in western Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine, blackened craters can be seen everywhere in front and behind the trenches, and countless yellow and clear bullet casings have rolled off the edges and bottoms of the trenches, especially those machine gun fire points that have been blown up and blown up, and the bullet casings left by continuous shooting have accumulated a thick layer mixed with the soil. There are only a few soldiers left in the foxhole in front of the trench, where there are a few "Bazooka" used for anti-tank warfare, this individual anti-tank rocket launcher can be called the signature weapon of the American infantry, during World War II, the American infantry helped destroy a large number of German tank armored vehicles, but it was a little difficult to deal with the horrific heavy tanks of the Soviet army. In the face of the surging Soviet offensive group, many soldiers could not escape the counterattack of the Soviet infantry after opening fire.

The traditional tactics of the officers and men on the front-line positions retreated along the communication trenches to reserve positions and special anti-shell bunkers as usual, which minimized the casualties of the soldiers in the shelling, and the soldiers who remained in the forward positions for vigilance and observation often had to pray for God's favor. With the continuous development of artillery and gunpowder technology, a large-caliber artillery shell can directly kill lives within tens or even hundreds of meters, although a strong fortress can greatly absorb shocks and impacts, but in the case of a close landing point or direct fire, the internal personnel are still facing a deadly threat. Heavy artillery fire continued to pound the ground, and the wrath of the former king of war could still be clearly felt from miles away. In the clear sky, warplanes flew high in the sky from time to time, but it was difficult to find the ubiquitous wild horses, fire-breathing fires and meteors. Accustomed to a smooth attack, the Allied officers and soldiers in a defensive position had to bear tremendous psychological pressure, and after the continuous shelling, there were always some people with weak willpower on the long front who fell into a state of collapse, and many more died quietly in the shelling: some of them were unfortunately hit by shells or shrapnel, and some of them were violently killed by the rupture of their internal organs in the violent impact. By contrast, those buried in the dirt kicked up by the artillery fire were far luckier, and when the officers whistled sharply to urge the soldiers to return to the front line, countless people would get up with the dust on their heads and bodies, grab their weapons and follow the crowd to the other end of the trench. At this time, the Soviet artillery was still extending into the depth of the battle line, but due to the limitation of the range of the artillery, they were not yet able to penetrate the assembly area of the artillery and armored forces -- in order to avoid suffering losses in the exchange of artillery fire, the artillery had always placed their positions in the depth, and its range was just enough to intercept fire in front of the front-line positions of their own side.

"All units strictly hold their positions, and anti-tank personnel enter the front line!"

Alerted by the loud reminders of the officers, the machine gunners began to repair the bunkers destroyed by artillery fire, and the riflemen were not idle, using their sapper shovels to shovel up the mud and sand that had fallen at the bottom of the trenches and reinforce them to the outer edge of the trenches. The fierce Soviet attacking force did not give the Allies much time to prepare, and the rumbling machinery rattled and soon converged into patches, filling the woods and valleys ahead......

(To be continued)