As soon as Lin Youde returned to his seat, Lina, who was sitting next to him, said, "You are so fluent in Turkish." ”

"I am equally fluent in Hebrew." Lin Youde immediately said in Hebrew with a pure accent, "I am a master of linguistics. ”

It's just that this is the effect of cheating.

Lina smiled, and then changed the subject: "This time, you personally served as the commander of the Eastern Mediterranean Theater, considering that there will be a situation that needs to be coordinated. Is it true that someone else is responsible for the specific military command? ”

"No, I'll command the troops myself." Lin Youde replied with great certainty, because he still used Hebrew, so he continued confidently and boldly, "Actually, there is no one in the German army system who listens to me and has enough ability to serve as the commander of this theater of operations. And then those who came from the burgher class and obeyed my leadership were not suitable for the post of commander. ”

This latter sentence is about Moder.

In their eyes, the Soviet Union invested far more troops than the German army to attack, and paid far greater casualties than the German army, and the Soviet army was commanded by Zhukov, the most prestigious of the Soviet generals, which is enough to prove how explosive Moder is.

But in reality, the entire German Army Group Center was involved in the defense of Operation Mars, and almost all of the strategic reserves of Army Group Center were smashed into the defense zone of Moder.

On the tactical side, although Moder implemented his concept of defensive warfare in the Rzhev salient, established a multi-layered defensive line, and deployed the main forces near the second defensive line, Moder failed to achieve the last step of his defensive warfare idea: to counter-assault and take the lost positions after the multi-layered defensive line was sluggish and depleted by the enemy. At the very beginning of the campaign, he ordered the 39th Panzer Corps to throw in their reserves for a counterattack, but with little success. Similarly, the counterattack of the 41st Panzer Corps was ineffective.

By the final stage of the Mars operation, the Soviets were almost successful, they cut off most of the city of Rzhev from the main German forces, but they also paid heavy casualties, and the disjointed forces were very tight, and there was a huge gap. At this time, the Germans were reinforced by the entire Army Group Center, so Moder's counterattack began to bear fruit. He surrounded the Soviet attacking forces that were out of touch with the Soviet follow-up forces, but failed to completely annihilate these forces, and the Soviet 41st Army, which was surrounded south of Bere, successfully broke through Moder's "defenses" and returned to its own front, which directly led to Moder's lack of strength to recover the salient positions occupied by the resuscitative army near Bere, leaving hidden dangers for the later battles.

In fact, Moder's shortcomings are clear from the Mars operation: he will not organize offensive battles. Hardly any offensive battle in his military career was victorious.

Therefore, while some people trumpet that Moder is a master of defense, they often use a mocking tone to talk about Moder's poor offensive combat resume. However, in World War II, all successful defensive operations ended in successful counterattacks, and World War II and World War I were completely different, most battles were war of movement, and it often happened that the attacker and the defender attacked at the same time.

Manstein was ordered in 43 to take charge of Army Group South to resist the ferocious offensive of the Soviet army after winning the Battle of Stalingrad, and in the end he fought not a Ukrainian defense of Rausch, but a Kharkiv counterattack.

This is the biggest difference between World War II and World War I, generals who can only defend in World War I are saved, and generals who cannot attack in World War II cannot become masters of defensive warfare.

Of course, some people may not be convinced when they see this, pointing to the exchange of Soviet and German armies in the Mars operation. But in fact, the Soviet army suffered more than 300,000 casualties in the Mars operation, and the German army suffered more than 40,000 casualties, and this casualty ratio was not particularly out of place in 42 years - really.

This figure of more than 300,000 is the figure of Western war historians, the German army claimed to have inflicted 500,000 casualties on the Soviet army at the time, and the Soviets themselves calculated that the figure was similar to the estimate of Westerners: about 100,000 killed and missing, and 230,000 wounded.

A closer look at the Mars operations reveals that the Soviets' casualties were similar to the huge casualties they suffered at the beginning of the war. For example, in Operation Mars, the Soviets threw in a lot of cavalry -- you read that right, cavalry, and the entire army.

At that time, an officer of the 215th Grenadier Regiment of the 78th Infantry Division of the German Army recorded in his diary the massacre of a Cossack cavalry company by a JU88, which swept over the heads of the advancing Cossack cavalry several times and wounded more than 300 cavalrymen and their mounts with machine guns.

In many places, the Soviets forced their way into the German defenses on favourable terrain, still using the tactics of the First World War skirmishers, in which tanks were scattered for fire support.

In addition, during the Mars operation, the Soviet army tried to use a new method of warfare, emphasizing advance, bypassing support points when encountering fierce resistance, and going all out to ensure the speed of advance on key targets. But this tactic was carried out with a fatal blow: the Soviets underestimated the will of the German troops, and these isolated support points did not collapse, but continued to fight, causing great problems for the subsequent Soviet troops, making it impossible for the Soviets to continue to invest troops to replace the heavily depleted ones after the advance on the front line - the aforementioned disconnect also had a huge bearing on this.

To put it bluntly, the Soviet army had not yet adapted to the war form of World War II at this time, and by 43 years, the Soviet army's own defense system had also become such a deep defensive line composed of a large number of scattered support points, and they never made such a mistake again.

All in all, seventy percent of the responsibility for the failure of Operation Mars lies with the Soviets themselves.

Model's performance in this defensive operation can only be said to be decent, and there are no particularly big highlights in military affairs, but on the contrary, the tactical quality and combat will of the grassroots officers and non-commissioned officers of the German front-line units shine brightly.

Of course, there are also commendable parts of this operation, Moder quickly reviewed the entire battlefield after the Soviet offensive began, and then transferred troops from the less stressed troops to the besieged Rzhev salient, and he personally intervened in these movements, so that the Germans could enter the theater of war relatively quickly. As for the reinforcements sent by Army Group Center, he also went all out to ensure that these troops arrived on the battlefield quickly.

In contrast, the Soviet side had a very bad appearance due to the inexperience of the staff officers, and many troops were blocked on the way to the front line and then bombarded to death by German artillery.

So don't underestimate the fact that Moder let the reinforcements arrive on the battlefield quickly, the road conditions in the Soviet Union are really bad, it is too normal for the troops to encounter "traffic jams" during the movement, and the Germans are also blocking the Soviet troops. Later, Moder went to Army Group North as a commander, and when he took office, he commanded the retreat to the Panther Line. At that time, there were only two roads available to the Germans - one was in rather bad condition, and the other was not even a road. However, Moder personally organized the mobilization and successfully retreated most of the German troops, without letting the Germans block the road to death.

Karius chronicled the retreat in his memoirs, specifically mentioning the poor and congested roads. But in the end they all retreated to Narva.

In short, Moder was a very powerful chief of staff, but giving him the title of master of defense was obviously overblown. This "master of defense" was not worthy of this title at all in the Western Front, and he made a great mistake in the defensive operation against the Market Garden commanded by An Heng, he misjudged the strength of the Allies and ordered a ban on blowing up the Nijmegen Bridge, as a result of which the Allies captured the bridge and established a bridgehead on the Vaal River, which deprived Moder of the opportunity to block the Allied forces on the Vaal River.

Moder then organized the Battle of the Woods-Aachen Defense, suffering casualties1 himself. 50,000 people, causing 2 to the US military. About 70,000 casualties, and lost Aachen.

The Americans always regarded the battle at the Hüeh T Forest as a serious defeat, but in reality the German losses were even more fatal, and the Germans could no longer afford to lose 150,000 regular soldiers at a time, whether they were from the first or second lines.

But some people may say at this time that when the US military has been devastated, there can still be a one-to-two exchange ratio that is very powerful. It's a pity that these people didn't know that Aachen was an important support point on the Siegfried Line, with strong reinforced concrete permanent fortifications.

Relying on the Siegfried defense line, this casualty ratio can still be played, and this "defense master" can be watered no matter what.

To put it bluntly, Moder's theory of regional defense is only a modified version of the tactical theory of the First World War, and many remnants of the First World War can be seen in his theory, such as the so-called multi-layer static defense line, in fact, the German army has been using it in the late World War I, when the German defense line was deployed in this way, and there were also solid omnidirectional defense support points distributed between the two layers of trenches.

In World War II, Modell's theory was actually not very suitable for the reality of war, and his theory would consume a lot of his own forces while consuming the enemy, turning the defensive war into a meat grinder.

After the end of World War II, it was widely believed that Moder's theory was outdated, and the Warsaw Pact and NATO had been in a confrontation in Europe for a long time, and NATO used a defensive method of defense that was closer to Manstein's Resilient Defense Doctrine.

Lin Youde didn't want to fight a meat war, and the terrain of the Eastern Mediterranean theater was not suitable for regional defense at all - paralysis was full of large deserts, and the settlements were so far apart that the armored troops could move in the desert at will, and the area defense was a ghost, and Manstein couldn't drop Moder if he came. And Manstein is still in charge of defending the most critical "bee waist" part of the long German-occupied zone in Russia, Lin Youde does not dare to transfer him away, although the Russians are hanging up the free battle card, but after all, they are still accumulating strength, and they can't tell when they will be played.

Therefore, Lin Youde prepared quite abundant forces on the Eastern Front to wait for the Russians.

(This paragraph is really annoyed by a German blow in the book review area, and I don't want to talk about it anymore.) ）