"Is it confirmed? The Soviets are forming a large-scale sniper group? Are you sure it's a group? It's not a single person?" The statistical officer at the division headquarters looked at the notebook sent from the front in detail, and even found a Russian translator to carry out meticulous translation work on the contents of the book.

The little notebook recorded the contents of the sniper's lessons, including how to clean and maintain the gun, how to adjust the sight, and how far to shoot. There is also the inclusion of where the snipers of the Germans are easy to spot, and so on. It is all-encompassing and quite comprehensive, which makes the Germans who see it feel a little incredible.

"It could be printed and distributed as a reference material. After reading the translated version, the division commander said: "Send it to the military headquarters in the name of our division headquarters and see how they use it." ”

So the two men were put on a bus to the military headquarters, and they had to personally explain to the army commander and the chief of staff the problems that the two of them were encountering at the front. It seems that the Germans attached great importance to the Soviet sniper training for war.

At the same time that the two of them came out of the division headquarters, a fierce exchange of fire was going on between the Soviet and German sides dozens of kilometers away. Since the Soviet-German tacit ceasefire and negotiations in Berlin, the Soviet-German army has not conducted such a large-scale combat operation.

The Soviet Union used 4 artillery regiments and 5 infantry divisions to launch a frantic attack on German positions. It seems that the Soviets felt that progress at the negotiating table was too slow, and they needed to speed up the entire Soviet-German theater a little.

"The Soviet troops are on the offensive! Yes! The artillery fire is quite fierce! They are trying to approach the eastern bank of the Dnieper!" On the phone, the commander of the German command on the front line was very anxious, and he was ordered to hold on to the east bank of the Dnieper and cover the troops to strengthen the defense system on the west bank.

On the phone, you can hear the Soviet artillery fire all over the mountains, like raindrops on the positions of the German troops. Since the failed Soviet invasion of Germany, there has not been a Soviet offensive of this magnitude, and the German positions are crumbling and seem to be breached at any moment.

The troops ordered to defend fought very hard, and the Soviet Red Army began a round of "tentative offensive" with all its might as soon as Zhukov reached the front. When the Soviet general from the Far East arrived at the front, he guessed the strategic intentions of the German army, so he wanted to disrupt the opponent's campaign deployment as much as possible.

He keenly found that the German army was preparing to retreat to the Dnieper River to set up defenses, and if they did not take countermeasures, then the German troops with almost no losses would complete their defensive deployment in Ukraine, and the Dnieper River defense line would not necessarily be able to be overcome by the Soviet Red Army even if it was filled with millions of men. Once Ukraine is out of Soviet control for too long, then everyone knows that this place can no longer be Soviet territory.

So Zhukov immediately changed his battle plan and brought forward the offensive that had been postponed until the autumn to the current one. He ordered his troops to immediately recapture the banks east of the Dnieper, and then use artillery to interfere with the progress of the German fortifications along the river.

His judgment proved that the Germans did not have many troops left on the east bank, and they barely retained any decent armoured forces, and the Germans in most areas only put up a symbolic resistance and gave up their defensive positions. Seeing the successive victories of the Soviet troops, even the Soviet negotiators in Berlin straightened their waists more and more straight.

Soviet soldiers poured into the German defensive positions like a tidal wave, and sometimes a German machine-gun position hit all the spare barrels and was still unable to stop the desperate charge of the enemy regardless of casualties.

Zhukov was never a general who cared about the casualties of his troops, and when he faced the Japanese army on the Eastern Front, and on the premise of mastering a large number of advantages in the early and middle stages, he was able to make a humiliating result in the later stage, because he disregarded the losses of his troops in order to achieve a quick victory.

In the front command of the Soviet Red Army, an operational staff officer and several political workers were reporting to Zhukov on the progress of the offensive at the front. One person is in charge of pointing to the map with a whip and explaining the specific area of combat, one is reporting on the amount of ammunition remaining in the troops, and the other is counting the losses of the troops.

"We are only 17 kilometers away from the nearest place on the Dnieper, and here and here, we are organizing a larger attack, but the casualties of the troops are very serious, and the other side's defense is too efficient. A staff officer whispered.

"The German air force sent air strikes on our material reserves, and the troops at the front were very short of supplies. An officer of the logistics department looked at the report and said helplessly: "The air supremacy of the front line is very firmly controlled by the other side, and our air force has lost 310 fighters, and it still has not been able to prevent the other side from using Stuka to attack our ground forces." ”

"The American P-40 fighter did not work?" Zhukov frowned, and asked suspiciously, a topic he was more interested in.

"The performance of the P-40 fighter is not as good as that of the German FW-190D fighter, and it can only play a role in relieving our air pressure. Moreover...... Moreover, the news from the Air Force said that the Luftwaffe had put in newer fighters, and the gap between the two sides in terms of weapon performance had widened again. ”

"......" Zhukov was silent when he heard this. Because this was a new situation, he had thought that the entry of the P-40 fighter would try to neutralize some of the Luftwaffe's air superiority, but now it seems that this hope is a bit naïve. Germany's scientific and technological superiority, which has been carefully accumulated, is indeed not easy to surpass.

At present, the introduction of new tanks will not make much of a difference. At most, it can only slightly reduce the losses by the icing on the cake. Speaking of losses, Zhukov frowned again, he didn't care about the loss of infantry, the loss of 10,000 people a day was not unacceptable to him.

"Order the troops to continue the offensive! Replace several main divisions that are fighting in succession with reserve divisions, but the offensive must not be stopped! See?" Zhukov gave the order to continue the battle, and in his mind, the Germans must have needed more rest than his troops.

"General, is it possible to change the order for political workers to take the lead in the charge?" a political worker complained to Zhukov with a sad face: "It's not that we can't set an example, and our loyalty to Comrade Stalin is unquestionable, but...... The snipers on the other side are so powerful that our losses are simply unbearable. ”

As soon as Zhukov arrived at the Soviet-German front, he gave the order that the political workers must take the lead in the attack, and he hated these people pointing fingers behind him, and thought that instead of letting them idle and idle and thinking about things all day, it was better to let them set an example and take the others into the battle.

These people usually look like they are on top, and they boast of being extremely loyal to the Soviet Motherland and to Comrade Stalin, so Zhukov also used this as an excuse for them to lead by example and "lead others to sacrifice for the Motherland." Although this order did have a certain effect over the past few days, the loss of political workers was also very desperate.

The snipers deployed by the Germans in their positions were simply ubiquitous demons, their marksmanship was accurate and cleverly hidden, and it was often the commanders and political workers who had just stood up and shouted slogans to mobilize the soldiers to attack, and they would shoot and kill the commanders and fighters who took the lead. And the newly organized offensive can quickly collapse with the death of the commander, and these German snipers are often more effective than a machine gun at such times.

The death of 4,100 grassroots and mid-level political workers in a single day was unthinkable before, and now many political foremen are preparing to write a joint letter to Stalin accusing Zhukov of his intention to squeeze out the Bolsheviks in the army. Zhukov could not afford this crime, and he had to come up with a countermeasure to appease these political workers who had not done enough to do more than they could do.

"I have no intention of squeezing out your men in the military. Zhukov explained and proposed a compromise between the two sides: "You can choose your own subordinates to replace those who have lost, so that the basic structure will not change." But the battle must go on, not stop. ”

The two political commissars glanced at each other and knew that Zhukov was bribing them with personnel power, but both of them saw a hint of joy in each other's eyes - after all, it was a good thing for them to justifiably install people in the army, and once they had the power of life and death in their hands and set up their own team, it would be a matter of course to go further. So they agreed to Zhukov's quid pro quo almost at the same time, patting their chests and guaranteeing that the battle could continue.

Some losses can be compensated, for example, the losses of political workers are relatively easy to compensate. However, some losses are obviously not easy to replenish, such as snipers, which are very difficult to train. The number of Soviet sniper losses skyrocketed during the battle, which also made Zhukov clearly see the huge gap in the capabilities of Soviet and German snipers.

Within seven days, 98 of the 300 snipers who had just been trained on the Soviet side were killed by the Germans, and each of these Soviet snipers was a valuable asset of the Soviet Union.

They were armed with custom-made 3x magnifying scopes from the United States, which the Soviet Union simply could not produce. For this equipment, the Soviet Union loaded hundreds of tons of timber onto American freighters, and now almost a third of this expensive equipment is now the spoils of war for the Germans. R1148