PS: Thank you to the book friend "Wangyun Mountain People" for generously rewarding and voting for the monthly ticket ^_^ again

Fortunately, the Luftwaffe was fighting defensively on the territory under its control, so most of the pilots could survive and return to the unit after parachuting, so the losses in this area were much smaller than those of the Allies. In fact, the biggest losses were actually sandwiched between Britain and Germany in the lowland countries, because most of the air battles took place over these areas, and the crashed planes on both sides alone had caused a lot of losses to the civilians of the three countries, and the Allied bombers failed to drop their bombs for various reasons, and often dropped the bombs they carried before returning to avoid accidents when landing

Although the expanded strategic bombing of 1945 had not yet destroyed Germany's war potential, nor had it wrestled the Luftwaffe with air supremacy over continental Western Europe, or even just the three Low Countries, at a very high cost, it nevertheless had some positive effects. In order to ensure the security of the homeland, the mustache was forced to withdraw most of the jet fighters and a large number of excellent pilots from the Eastern Front, which made the German air supremacy on the Soviet-German battlefield shaky; In order to repair the industrial areas and residential areas damaged by the Allied strategic bombing as soon as possible, Germany's limited transportation capacity and industrial labor force were occupied in large quantities, which made it increasingly difficult to supply the German army invading the Soviet Union, and the mustache had to let go of restrictions and agree to hire a large number of female workers in factories.

However, it was normal to increase the proportion of women in the labour force during the war. As for the Soviet Union, which was almost depleted of manpower due to the fall of large swaths of the elite and the heavy casualties in the early stages of the war, not only did the large use of women, even the elderly and children become important laborers in factories and farms, and even a large number of able-bodied women joined the Red Army, and the number and proportion of them increased and increased, even exceeding one million in 1945

By quenching their thirst, the Soviets regained a large number of mobile forces, but at a time when the Axis forces on the Soviet battlefield were increasingly showing their lack of strength, the Soviet high command decided to seize this favorable opportunity to launch another major counteroffensive. Reverse the current unfavorable situation of the Soviet-German war in one fell swoop.

Leningrad, which had been besieged by the Axis forces for a long time, was in desperate need of rescue. But it was not easy to break the siege of Leningrad, and at least 1.5 million troops would have to be mobilized to have a chance of victory, which is about the total strength of the Soviet field forces, if it suffered another defeat. The Soviet manpower was in danger of being completely depleted. Today's Soviet Union no longer has the confidence to play such a big gamble.

And if you want to recover Moscow. It would be even more difficult, as the Soviets would not only have to deal with hundreds of thousands of Axis troops in Moscow and its vicinity, but would also be outflanked by more than a million Axis troops on the periphery of Leningrad. Without a field force of 2 million, the Soviet army had no hope of victory. Moreover, the retreat from Moscow was quite successful, but the practical significance of recovering Moscow was greatly reduced, although it was still of great political value, but Stalin believed in strength, so he did not hesitate to choose the breakthrough point on the southern front

Due to the siege of Leningrad occupied a large number of mobile forces of the German army, Manstein's Army Group South can be said to be unprecedentedly weak, deducting the Caucasus defense line and the Ukrainian garrison that cannot be appropriated in principle and the puppet army that has not been regarded as an army, all the troops that Manstein can use add up to more than 300,000, of which the German army is only more than 200,000, and most of them are forced to disperse to protect communication lines and important cities, so when the Soviet Union's more than one million troops are overwhelming, Even Manstein, the world's top player, was powerless.

Although Manstein seized the weakness of the Soviet army's logistics, gave full play to the advantages of the German armored forces, and almost annihilated more than 100,000 Soviet troops, he was finally forced to abandon Stalingrad and its surrounding hundreds of thousands of square kilometers due to insufficient troops

Although the Soviet counteroffensive on the southern front suffered more than 300,000 casualties, it succeeded in recapturing Stalingrad and a large area of lost territory, restoring to some extent the Soviet Union's seriously damaged industrial strength, and at the same time, the Soviet Union's almost depleted manpower was also replenished to a certain extent, and more importantly, it ensured the security of the Baku oil base and the Ural industrial region.

The German army not only lost the huge advantage it had achieved in the southern front, but also suffered more than 200,000 casualties (of course, it was not a puppet army), of which the German casualties exceeded 100,000, which made Manstein, who had retreated to Ukraine, constantly send telegrams to Berlin for help.

Once Ukraine loses, the invading German army is in danger of total collapse, but at this time, the mustache does not have the slightest mobile force to adjust, Germany is already short of manpower, and now it is blooming on all sides, and the battle line is still extremely long, and it is strange that the troops are enough. In desperation, the mustache was forced to take the risk of sending 300,000 elite troops from the German army sent to the Balkans to suppress Tito's guerrillas to aid Ukraine, plus the newly formed 100,000 SS troops in the country and the 100,000 German troops squeezed out of Leningrad and Moscow to the south, the total number of German troops under Manstein increased to 800,000, plus a large number of servant troops from Romania and other countries, there were 1.2 million people, and the number of servant troops as cannon fodder continued to increase

Manstein, who had received reinforcements, was so confident that he soon launched a fierce offensive against the Soviets. At this time, the Soviet army on the southern front was preparing to make persistent efforts to recapture the granary Ukraine in one fell swoop, so Stalin boldly delegated power to transfer the main forces of the Caucasian Front and the Steppe Front to Zhukov's command, so that the total number of troops under his command exceeded 2 million, including 1.5 million in the field troops alone, and the strength is still increasing. As a result, a major battle in the history of World War II in which both sides invested the most troops (the total number of troops invested by both sides exceeded 4.5 million) broke out (to be continued......