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The night was as thick as ink, everything was quiet, and the oppressive atmosphere before the war made it impossible for the soldiers on both sides to breathe. After seven days of effective blockade, and at the cost of suspending the siege and annihilation of Tashkent, Xu Shuzheng and Liu Mingzhao actively cooperated, and on the line from Algarbas to Tardse, east of Ultau Mountain, Hedgehog gathered 6,500 105 mm, 155 mm, and 130 mm vehicle-mounted rocket launchers and 210 mm howitzers. Behind each gun emplacement, there were piles of ammunition. Every shell was filled with insulting words. The soldiers vented their anger and emotions in their own way.

At one o'clock in the morning, when the piercing current passed through the headphones, the night was instantly ignited. The Wehrmacht artillerymen, who had just been blown to the ground by Zhukov's artillery a week earlier, pulled the firing rope at the same time. Booming, booming and flashing fireballs rose from twelve kilometers, and the dead silence of the Soviet positions was suddenly broken by the sound of artillery shaking the ground, and the entire defense line was like a volcanic eruption! The earth trembled, and the sky burned and discolored! Huge clouds of smoke that swelled in the shape of mushrooms and rushed up to hundreds of meters in the air converged into a whole piece, which was enough to shatter the eardrums one after another, and the Soviet soldiers in the exposed cover trenches were beaten dizzily and scurryed with their heads in their hands. In the blink of an eye, the bare position on the ground had been blown up to the ground and cracked, the soldiers were buried alive by the collapsed trench wall, more people were blown up to the flesh and blood, the stumps and broken arms were mixed with the broken internal organs mixed with the earth and rocks were thrown high into the air, and the shock wave visible to the naked eye was like a gel, repeatedly washing the entire surface!

The terrible artillery fire seemed endless, and heavy ammunition trucks in patches ran back and forth, and no one would have mercy on the enemy. The artillerymen ripped off their clothes and sweated out heavy shells one after another. The root does not need to look at the target, does not need to discern, and the whole command is only one within 40 minutes. How many hits how many!

In the sortie position in front of the artillery, 212 heavy tanks waited quietly. The commanders pushed open the hatch and smoked heavily to relieve their boredom, and the gunners double-checked the scope, counting the yellow-orange bullets on the chain. Behind and around the tank, there are elite commandos in steel helmets, wearing distinct white armbands, and wielding a variety of weapons. The heavy artillery fire and the stagnant air made everyone sweat like rain.

"Get on the bayonet!"

A long-lost unfamiliar word. Let the blood of the soldiers who were responsible for the first round of assault missions boil. A bayonet with a shiny handle came out, and under the reflection of the artillery fire, the cold glow was like blood!

Fifty-one-year-old Du Zishan, with gray hair, pushed away the guards and jumped into the trenches like young men. As a major general and division commander of the 49th Motorized Infantry Division of the Second Army, his resume is dazzling in the eyes of soldiers. The Battle of the Meat Grinder in Qingdao, the first batch of Chinese infantry to break through the Siegfried Line on the Western Front in France. The Rainier Urban War pursued the vanguard of the German fight. "The leggings are important, so that you can eat hard! No, you can't hang this grenade too far back. Keep your head down and run according to the three-three tactics! If your vision is poor at night, you have to sacrifice with the squad leader, and the deputy squad leader must stand up in time. The machine gun had to suppress the point of fire. Yes, shout when you run the position. The louder the better, echoing each other! Throw a grenade before jumping into the trench! Don't think that the cannon can sweep away the hair, Lao Tzu has seen artillery preparations that are several times more powerful than this back then. ”

Du Zishan went all the way forward in the trenches. Comforted the soldiers to check the equipment, and personally adjusted some soldiers who were not properly prepared. The personal care of the division commander made many soldiers cluck the guns in their hands. Finally, he picked up his rifle and raised the tip of his finger high: "This." It is to make you more courageous! It's not this to kill the enemy! You are happier than I was, and your rifle is faster than Maozi. The lower magazine reloads quickly! So use more brains, use more bullets, bullets are always faster than assassination! ”

"Who will bring the first wave?"

"Report to the division commander, it's me." The thirty-year-old, dark-faced assault regiment commander stepped forward.

"There are 70,000 old hairmen on the other side! They are hiding in the trenches and waiting for you! So you not only have to complete the mission, but also bring your brothers! Du Zishan, who had personally experienced the bloody cement pool on the Western Front, shook the hand of the regiment commander fiercely, and he understood how terrible the stubborn enemy was.

The regiment commander was hot with excitement: "Don't worry, the division commander, I can't take the position, I'll come to see you!" ”

"Good!"

As soon as the words fell, three red flares suddenly appeared in the sky. Before the trumpet sounded, Du Zishan had already pulled out his pistol and handed it to the regiment commander: "This was captured from a German general back then." Take it! One sentence to remember! The infantry is the king of war! Infantry, in order to truly solve the battle! Go ahead and kill them all! Solve the battle! ”

"Kill, kill, kill!"

"Wehrmacht attack!"

Five minutes before the end of the fire, bulldozers and tanks were the first to leap out of their positions, and the air was filled with the deafening roar of engines and the pungent smell of inadequate diesel burning.

Almost as soon as the tank moved, Golikov, who had broken the command, jumped out of the bunker. At this time, the staff officers were already panicking, and they didn't expect Liu Mingzhao to gather such a powerful artillery firepower cluster. "Don't tell me about the loss! Enter the position and be sure to block the enemy! Golikov roared angrily, he knew that if he failed, not only would he be finished, but Zhukov would be finished, and even Lukin's flank would be finished!

So, this is the place of the decisive battle!

The officers, too, knew the heavy responsibility and rushed into the positions to mobilize the soldiers despite the artillery fire. But the Wehrmacht's firepower was so fierce that the Soviets could not raise their heads from the surface, and many soldiers were holding guns and were shocked to death by the explosion of shells in their bunkers! As the last shell fell, the Soviet soldiers had not yet taken their breath, and batches of bulldozers and tanks had already appeared in front of the position. Compared with Zhukov, who was unprepared, Liu Mingzhao fought steadily and steadily, and the lineup of 50 heavy engineering tanks can be called a model of mechanized combat.

"Fire! Fire! ”

In Golikov's shout, the Soviet positions were full of firepower, and countless dazzling lines of fire rushed out of the high ground and rushed towards the steel giants. The tracer bullets fired by the machine gun formed a magnificent line of the Grim Reaper's sickle. But the Soviet artillery fire was much weaker than the previous days, and the thick-armored bulldozers and tanks did not stop even if they were occasionally hit in the side or exploded on the engine by a grenade. After the torrent of steel tore through the defensive line, tens of thousands of elite assault officers and soldiers jumped into the trenches along the passage opened by the tanks in the face of the flames. While clearing the trenches. Bulldozers and Spitfires also cooperated with each other to continue to strangle the Soviet troops on the second line. Heavy submachine gun fire continued to kill the remnants of the enemy in the position, and the remaining Soviet troops used crowd tactics to hope to plug the gap, explosions and gunfire were connected in the position, and corpses and blood were everywhere.

Du Zishan's care worked, and under the dense grenade opening the way, the 3,000 elite veterans of the 49th Motor Infantry Division quickly rushed to the high ground marked as 203. In just two hours, Heights 203 was completely breached. However, as a commando captain. The regiment commander who was given a gun by Du Zishan sacrificed here to cover his comrades, and when the body was carried down, he also pinched the pistol.

Regardless of sadness, after receiving the news, Liu Mingzhao immediately sent a battalion of 210-mm heavy self-propelled howitzers to climb the 300-meter-high ground to aim at Golikov's flank. The heavy 110-kilogram high-explosive grenade was condescending. Smash the enemy hard from five kilometers away.

Golikov was not willing to lose his position, and in order to plug the gap, an entire division was sent to retake the position. The officers and men of the 49th Motor Infantry Division did their best to protect the artillery positions. At the same time, on the front, Golikov, although he would not have laid out the Golan trenches, the traditional V-shaped anti-tank trenches still delayed the advance of the tanks. To open the gap, not only engineering tanks rushed to the front. Combat sappers also used blasting canisters to constantly blow gaps. In order to fight for the gap, the soldiers on both sides repeatedly strangled and shot at each other. In order to deal with the tank breakthrough, the assault team organized by Golikov ended up drilling under the belly of the tank with cluster grenades. And the elite commandos of the Wehrmacht. Then he swore to protect the tank with a dense rain of bullets.

As time passed, the heroic combat sappers finally blew more and more gaps with their flesh, and along the gaps, clusters of tanks rushed to the trenches in the explosion. With repeated strafing from synchronous machine guns, many gunners aimed at targets even within 100 meters. When the first rays of dawn poke their heads out. The five heights of the Algarbas have all been captured, and behind the trenches strewn with corpses, more than a dozen soldiers have joined forces to plant the national flag on the summit in the face of artillery fire. The image was later captured by a military reporter and became a symbol of the victory of the Chinese National Defense Forces and their return to Central Asia.

The loss of the Algarbas made the broken Golikov completely defeated. By 3 p.m., 30,000 of the 70,000 troops had been killed, the rest were either captured or scattered, and even the whereabouts of the commander Golikov were unknown (it was later confirmed that he was rescued by cavalry at the last moment and caught up with Zhukov's main force).

After defeating Golikov's division, Liu Mingzhao did not rest, and immediately ordered the 103rd Division and the 2nd Armored Division to be used as arrows, with a total of 8 divisions following behind the Soviet army and chasing wildly all the way. All the soldiers were full of energy, and even the food was eaten while holding canned food. Under this frantic pursuit, Zhukov's rear was constantly surrounded and cut. It was not until May 11, after two consecutive days of pursuit, that Zhukov reluctantly set up a defensive line by taking advantage of the trenches of the Kuranut Peth River. But before he could gain a firm foothold, Liu Mingzhao first confronted him across the river with 12 divisions, and then unexpectedly crossed the river from Kievka, 80 kilometers northeast, with two Kazakh independent cavalry divisions stationed in Karaganda as arrows, and appeared behind him in only one day and one night.

Under the circumstance that the Wehrmacht had abolished the divisional cavalry establishment, Zhukovgen did not expect that Liu Mingzhao would also use the ancient cavalry tactics and suddenly fell into passivity. Faced with the Wehrmacht surrounded on all sides, they had to abandon the line of defense that they had held for a day again and burrow into the Kulgargin Forest. But when he drilled out of the forest and was about to join Lukin, Wu Qi and the others, who had been waiting here for a few days, immediately launched a sneak attack! After two days and two nights of sleepless strangulation, Zhukov suffered the most painful defeat, and the troops were defeated from the initial 25 divisions, two tank corps, and the 30,000 miscellaneous armies that were replenished one after another, and only four divisions were successfully defeated, and the rest were all surrounded and annihilated.

After eating Zhukov's main force, Liu Mingzhao not only did not weaken Zhuo Fan's armored cluster, but on the contrary, handed over the two armored divisions rushed from Karaganda to him again. In this way, the number of armored divisions in Zhuo Fan's hands increased to 5, as well as 1 mechanized infantry division and 1 cavalry division. And he did not live up to Liu Mingzhao's expectations, and it took only three days to take the 23rd Armored Division and the Polish 1st Armored Division back to Atbasar, 210 kilometers northeast of Alcarek. Then he cleverly used a captured T34 battalion as a bait, disguised as Zhukov's defeated troops, and easily deceived the defenders to seize the railway station west of the city. By the time Lukin heard the news and ordered the garrison to retake the railway station, the two Panzer Divisions had already rushed into the city with lightning speed, not only cutting the railway line to Ufa, but also capturing a full 210 brand-new T34/76 tanks ready for the Kazakh Front. and a large amount of materiel and ammunition, including 500 122-mm guns.

The severance of the railway line to the west, the crushing defeat of Zhukov, and the complete exposure of Lukin's flank to the powerful Wehrmacht Panzer Division forced him to abandon the offensive and retreat with 55 divisions to Cherinograd (present-day Asnata) and Kokchetav (present-day Kokshetau). But the troops were only halfway through when bad news came. Two armored regiments and three infantry divisions led by Ye Weixun and Xu Xiangqian made a 370-kilometer detour and suddenly appeared in Shuchinsk, southeast of Kokchetav, and captured the Sinuha Mountain Heights at an altitude of 947 meters in the afternoon of the same day.

The Siniukha Heights are a natural barrier between Shchuchinsk and Kokchetav, and the strategic location of the hill is extremely important because it overlooks the train line from Petropavlovsk to the south. Therefore, in order to recapture the high ground, Lukin strictly ordered five infantry divisions to be stationed in Kokchetave. Together with the three divisions of his vanguard, a total of eight divisions launched a continuous attack on the heights. During the siege of three days and three nights, Lukin's Kazakh Front, at the cost of 40,000 casualties, was still unable to seize the heights, forcing him to abandon the railway line. Heading west into the wilderness, try to make a detour to Petropavlovsk.

But he didn't expect that Zhuo Fan, who snatched Atbasar, was already waiting for him in the wasteland. And at this time, Zhuo Fan's strength increased sharply again, because he used planes to transport more than 1,000 tank soldiers, and directly organized a total of 259 T34/76, 51 T26 and other tanks captured along the way into the sixth armored division into a cluster. Faced with the frontal interception of three armored divisions, although Lukin invested one tank corps and five infantry divisions, he was still entangled by Zhuo Fan and could not break through.

At this time, Liu Mingzhao had already pulled out a full 55 divisions south of Mount Akdem. It merges into a huge arrow that spreads 300 kilometers to the west. Just like Schlieffen's revolving gate, with Akdem Mountain as the central axis, sweeping thousands of armies from south to north! And at the farthest end of this large arc is Zhuo Fan's armored cluster.

Seeing that they will be surrounded. Lukin and Zhukov had no choice but to cut off their tails to survive and lead their troops north into the Land of a Thousand Lakes. Just as they passed through the Lake of Sherlettian Jiz, they encountered the main force of Long Yun interspersed to the west. After knowing that the armored troops of this terrain cannot move and cannot eat the opponent in one go. Long Yun decisively gave up the idea of a complete siege and led his troops to cut off the front and back contact with Lu Jin. Ultimately. Only 19 divisions of Lukin and Zhukov's 80 divisions, 3 tank corps (3 tank divisions each) returned to Petropavlovsk. Coupled with the troops that Zhuo Fan came all the way to eat and expel into the encirclement, a total of 75 divisions, 720,000 Soviet troops were encircled in the large triangle of Cherinograd, Shuchinsk and Artbasar.

In this way, on the basis of only eight divisions and three armored divisions, a deep penetration across 600 kilometers was completed. Zhuo Fan was certainly unstoppable, but Liu Mingzhao also played the tactics of large-depth attack like mercury, forcing Zhukov and Lukin to make mistakes constantly, and finally succeeded in encircling the main force.

On May 21, after the arrival of Liu Mingzhao's main force, Zhuo Fan set off again and appeared southwest of Kokchetav with six armored divisions. Interestingly, just as he was trying to find a way to attack, Ye Weixun and Xu Xiangqian also joined Long Yun, and took an armored division and four infantry divisions to volunteer to figure out how to attack the city from the east. As a result of the lack of prior notice, both units thought that the other was the enemy, and the self-propelled guns fired at each other at a distance of five kilometers. Fortunately, the pilot of the reconnaissance plane discovered it in time, and the shelling lasted less than five minutes, resulting in the wounding of 17 soldiers and a big oolong.

Yang Qiu did not wait for the results of the final encirclement and annihilation of the triangle, and after learning that Liu Mingzhao's main force had crossed the Ishim River, he knew that now even if the gods came, they would not be able to save the festering Petropavlovsk, and even Tashkent was no longer important. So that night, he took Jiang Baili, who rushed to the rendezvous, and set off for Riyadh.

At the same time as he left Central Asia, Li Zhenzhong, director of the Asian Department of the Military Intelligence Bureau, also quietly came to Saigon......

ps: October is the historical military month, and the editor asked the hippo to summon a monthly pass! Khan, I rarely ask for a monthly pass, so don't scream a few times this month! Taking advantage of the double monthly pass on the 1st-7th, the brothers will smash some monthly tickets for the hippopotamus!!!