Chapter 816: Timoshenko's Situation

In the face of the grim situation in the Soviet Far East, Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, could only choose a direction in the Outer Méng Ancient and Far Eastern regions, and after painful thinking and weighing the pros and cons, he Jiāo gave the Soviet People's Commissar Molotov an important task and led a team to the Outer Méng Ancient Region to negotiate with Tang Qiuli, who surrounded Zhukov and hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops.

This was Stalin's last resort, and the bottom line he gave Molotov was to "give that damned Chinese what he wanted," which was the result of forced compromise, and no matter how reluctant Stalin himself or the senior Soviet generals were, they had to face this reality and continue to delay with Tang Qiu, not only losing the ancient region of Outer Méng, but also the Far East would fall into the hands of the Japanese.

Therefore, negotiating with Tang Qiuli was Stalin's helpless choice, and it was undoubtedly the most correct choice, although he paid the corresponding price for this choice, perhaps this was the cost that Stalin had to pay for occupying the ancient areas outside the country.

After Molotov left, Stalin convened a meeting of the members of the Political Bureau of the CPSU to study the increasingly critical situation in the Far East.

The situation in the Far East dealt a heavy blow to Stalin one after another, and the Kwantung Army was like a bamboo, attacking the city, and the Soviet Union's largest military port in the Far East, Haishanwei, also fell into the hands of the Japanese army, and Admiral Bernizov, commander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, and Vice Admiral Kolyukin, a member of the political council, shot himself when the Japanese captured Haishanwei.

Before they died, the two of them jointly sent a farewell telegram to the General Staff and Stalin, the contents of which made Stalin sad to read once.

"The General Staff also transferred to Comrade Stalin, on September 10, the Japanese Kwantung Army launched a large-scale attack on our Haishanwei, and the battle was fierce, and by noon, our Red Army guard units were routed, most of the soldiers were killed, and all the officers and men of the Pacific Fleet, on the way to the emergency boarding, were intercepted by the Japanese army, and fought a battle with the Japanese army in the urban area, with most casualties."

"And most of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th fleets of the Japanese Navy have been near the Haishan Wei Military Port, and from the position of the fleet headquarters, looking at the Haishan Wei Military Port, the Japanese warships have blocked the waterway out of the port, so far, the Pacific Fleet has lost its ability to resist, and it is almost a foregone conclusion that all the warships will fall into the hands of the enemy. Kryugin is a masterpiece. ”

Stalin read this telegram with tears in his eyes, and the suicide of two senior admirals certainly made him sad, and the Pacific Fleet fell into the hands of the Japanese, which made Stalin almost faint in distress.

Will the Soviet Union's dream of going to the Pacific be cut off? Stalin kept asking himself, who was the culprit for the situation in the Far East that caused the current heavy losses of the Soviet Union? The initiator must be which Tang Qiuli, and the cào knife is Japanese, these two robbers, Stalin was ruthless in his heart, and he must avenge an arrow in his lifetime.

It was useless to grit your teeth, and the urgent problem now was to rescue Timoshenko and his troops of the Second Army from the siege of the Kwantung Army.

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPSU, according to Stalin's opinion, soon formed the operational deployment of the Soviet army in the Far East, and the troops of the 1st and 2nd Army of the Far East, which held on to the Arsenyev region, had to hold on for at least about two weeks, and the troops transferred to the Far East could be sent to the battlefield.

Second, the troops of the Far Eastern Military District in the vicinity of Kamchatka, which now have six infantry divisions, three motorized brigades, one tank brigade, and two air force fighter regiments, totaling about 72,000 troops, were immediately organized into the First Kamchatka Army, with Major General Sylenko, deputy director of the Operations Bureau of the General Staff of the Red Army, as commander and political commissar.

Third, the units of the Transcaucasian Front will abandon the task of fighting with the squadron and immediately advance eastward through the Baikal region to join the battlefield in the Far East, so that in the Far East, they will have to assemble three armies of about 430,000 troops, although they are still inferior in terms of troops, they can cope with it for a while.

In addition, Stalin also made a top-secret deployment, once the negotiations with Tang Qiuli were successful, Zhukov's troops were immediately rearmed in the Transcaucasian Military District and sent to the Far East theater, and all the Soviet troops in the Far East were reorganized into the Far Eastern Front and unified under Zhukov's command.

This is not the main thing, Stalin's main task for the future Far Eastern Front is to completely return the Kwantung Army to the territory of northeastern China, and immediately launch a comprehensive counterattack against the squadron under the command of Tang Qiuli from all directions in the eastern region of Outer Méng, and recover the ancient region of Outer Méng.

Stalin also emphasized: "Comrades, this plan is classified as a top secret, even for Comrade Zhukov, and after the end of the battle with the Japanese Kwantung Army and the complete victory of the Far Eastern Front, the General Staff will send someone to announce the order, and before that, whoever leaks the secret will be punished for treason."

However, with adoring eyes, they looked at this Georgian who could decide the fate of the Soviets, their great leader, the leader of the Soviets, and before the large-scale decisive battle with the Japanese began, Comrade Stalin had already considered the next battle plan, and the opponent was Tang Qiuli, a Chinese who caused great annoyance to the great Soviet Union.

The members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union present here asked themselves if they couldn't think of this, perhaps, this is the thinking of great people who are different from ordinary people, right? It can also be seen from this that Tang Qiuli was listed as an object that must be eliminated in Stalin's mind, and the depth of hatred must be eliminated as soon as possible, so that Stalin could not sleep, and he always remembered that Tang Qiuli was proud enough.

In fact, in Arsenyev in the Far East, Timoshenko's Second Army in the Far East could not withdraw even if it wanted to, and the Second Army of the Kwantung Army could not move Timoshenko's troops, and the two sides launched a battle in the Spaske Dalini area east of Lake Xingkai, and on 11 September, Timoshenko launched a large-scale counteroffensive against the Second Army of the Kwantung Army with a large number of armored forces as the forerunner.

By 12 September, the Third Army of the Kwantung Army had been pushed back to the Paspan line west of Spaskdalini, and the Kwantung Army had retreated more than 80 kilometers with more than 40,000 casualties, and had retreated to the Sino-Soviet border, and the Second Army of the Soviet Far East had recaptured Ussuriysk, but it also paid a considerable price, with more than 35,000 casualties, and the situation on the battlefield was favorable to the Second Army in the Far East.

However, the geographical environment of the eastern part of the Soviet Far East made Timoshenko's victory only tactical, and the narrow area bordering the Sea of Japan in the east and the Sino-Soviet border in the west was only more than 200 kilometers at the widest point and more than 100 kilometers at the narrowest, and there was no strategic room for maneuver at all.

According to Timoshenko's plan, after the formation of the Second Army, it would immediately move to the vicinity of Boli (Khabarovsk), and get out of such a narrow battlefield environment, so that it could obtain the maximum space for maneuver on the battlefield, advance westward from the outer eastern region of Méng, approach Kulen, relieve Zhukov's First Army from being encircled, and go south to attack the Kwantung Army troops who dared to invade the area around Haishanwei, thus achieving an extremely favorable situation in terms of geographical location and strategic layout.

After Timoshenge sent his own construction to the General Staff, the reply he received was: "Comrade Timoshenge of the Second Army of the Far East, new changes will take place in the ancient battlefield of the Far East, and the rescue of the First Army of the Far East is no longer an urgent task, and the main task of your department at present is to stay in the original station and pay close attention to the movements of the Kwantung Army. ”

When Timoshenko saw the order of the General Staff, he was furious, and the fact that these old men in Moscow, who were high above the ground and detached from reality, put more than 200,000 troops in such a narrow battlefield in order to put the Second Army in a dangerous situation.

There are at least four or six attack points to choose from, and Boli will definitely be one of them, judging from the geographical environment here, if the Kwantung Army occupies Boli, the Second Army will be cut off from retreat and fall into a situation of encirclement, Timoshenko does not understand why the General Staff does not listen to the opinions of the commanders of the front?

The General Staff in Moscow did not understand the situation here, and Timoshenko, who was here, saw the murderous spirit contained in the dense war clouds from the frequent movements of the Kwantung Army and the large number of troops gathered on the Sino-Soviet border, and in fact, he still misunderstood the orders of the General Staff a little.

Leaving the Second Army in the Far East here can play a deterrent role in the Kwantung Army, so that the Japanese will not dare to act rashly, and buy time to solve the war in the ancient areas of the outer country.

On 23 September, the Kwantung Army, which had been attacking Shun Lì on the other three fronts, immediately turned its attention to Timoshenko's Second Army in the Far East after clearing out other Soviet units in the Far East.

Commander of the Kwantung Army, Kenkichi Ueda, adjusted his strategic arrangements, and except for the Second Army, which continued to attack Sakhalin Island and attack the Kamchatka Peninsula according to the original plan, the other three troops immediately encircled the Timoshenko troops after completing the set combat missions.

On 24 September, the First Army of the Kwantung Army moved south from Boli, and the Fourth Army moved north from Haishanwei, and together with the Third Army, pressed on the whole line, tightly encircling the troops of the Second Army of the Soviet Far East in the vicinity of Arseniev.