Accardo sat quietly in his chair and listened to Field Marshal Brauchitsch of the Army General Staff report on the casualty figures of Army Group N, as well as the replenishment of troops in the front line.

For the first time, the casualties of more than 10,000 soldiers, who did not allow the troops to advance more than a kilometer, appeared in front of a German army general. Such a huge loss reminds people of Verdun and the Somme, the deep trenches and the endless barbed wire, like cold iron plates, which make people's memories full of trauma.

"My Führer, we expect to lose more than 200,000 people in Stalingrad, but at the moment this figure may be far from enough. There is a possibility that the casualties will exceed 300,000, or even 400,000. This situation is something we are not willing to accept, could you please consider the alternative plan of the General Staff and order Army Group N to stop the offensive?" Brauche asked Accardo, who had squinted slightly as he listened to him read the document.

No smart person would allow himself to trip over the same stone twice, let alone the General Staff of the German Army, which has always prided itself on being extremely smart. They abhor the memory of any failure, and are devoted to the slightest hint of a problem—these stubborn and rigorous Germanic people summing up the data, studying and deducing it repeatedly, for fear of another unplanned trouble.

For the General Staff of the German Army, there is no doubt that Verdun and the Somme are two areas with relatively large shadow areas in their hearts. As Accardo went from victory to victory, they eventually became more hypocritical, and the loss of thousands of German troops was enough to make a fuss, and everyone seemed to be increasingly unable to bear the pain of the loss.

"My marshal, how can there be immortals in war? This is what you said to me when you persuaded me. Accardo opened his squinted eyes and said to Brauchitsch: "All the way, to the city of Stalingrad, the loss of 10,000 people will be left to you, as a marshal...... Scared?"

Marshal Brauchitsch smiled bitterly, as the marshal of the Empire, of course he would not be so out of shape because of the loss of 10,000 people, but if he thought of what would happen next, this was the reason why he was so entangled.

So he took a step forward, closer to Accardo, and said, "My Führer, what I am afraid of is not the 10,000 soldiers that I am losing now, but the fact that these casualties will continue......"

"You're right, the casualties will continue this time. Accardo interrupted him, and then stared at Brauchitsch with a pair of eyes, and when he was uncomfortable, he continued: "And this casualty will reach its peak in Stalingrad, 100,000, 200,000, it is not the end!"

As he spoke, he stood up and stood in front of Marshal Brauchitsch: "General Cüchler, you can see better than you, see for yourself his plan of attack! This is the soldier of the Reich, this is the general to whom I deserve to entrust the front!"

Accardo picked up a report on the coffee table and handed it to Brauchitsch, who took the document and looked at it as the commander of Army Group N in the Southern Theater of Operations on the Eastern Front, signed by Army Group Qu Hiller.

Brauchitsch frowned at what was written in this document, and it was written that the first stage was going to clear Stalingrad's outer defensive positions at the cost of 50,000 soldiers. Seeing this, Brauchitsch couldn't help but scold Quchelel, and the Germans would generally use armored forces to clear the edge of the city, and in this case the casualties would be suppressed to very few.

However, even so, the German casualties in the report were still estimated to be a terrible 50,000, and it is difficult to imagine what the German army would have to pay for the actual siege of the city. Qucheller took the document and continued to look down, and sure enough, in the second stage of the offensive plan, Quchelel also clearly pointed out the possible loss of troops - a full 250,000 troops.

No one doubted the difficulty and bloodshed of urban warfare, but when a commander of an army of hundreds of thousands swore that fighting a city was not the price of completely occupying the city, but a full 300,000 people, it couldn't help but make people feel a little too cruel.

"My Führer. After reading the whole report, Brauchitsch felt as if he was struggling in a sea of blood in Stalingrad, and he felt that the blood had soaked his clothes, making his whole body slimy and very uncomfortable.

But he still spoke with difficulty and expressed his opinion: "Although General Qu Hillel's style of play saves a lot of resources, the sacrificed troops are inevitably ...... It's a little too much. ”

He breathed a sigh of relief, and seemed to feel that his body was slightly more comfortable, before continuing to say to Accardo in front of him: "I know that the offensive plan is to capture Stalingrad as soon as possible, but this as soon as possible may be a month, it may be two months, is it too impatient to be so anxious to put troops into the city to fight?"

"I don't think there's anything wrong with me and you marshaling the importance of Stalingrad, right?" asked Accardo softly, "so there's nothing wrong with me ordering Quchreel to take the city as soon as possible." And you know, in the street battles at Stalingrad, the proportion of losses of our army will not be higher than one seventh. It was planned, and there is nothing worth repeating. ”

Yes, many of the troops who died were prisoners left over from the Soviet purge, which had only been training for more than 20 days, and some volunteers from Ukraine. The use of these people to fill the pit in Stalingrad was already a tacit consensus among the German military leadership.

After thinking of this, Brauchitsch's mood was slightly better, after all, it was a foreigner who was sacrificed, or a group of young German boys, which was actually an essential difference for a senior German general. At least in Brauchitsch's view, the German troops were elite, and they were resources that could not be easily squandered.

"But, my Führer. He thought for a moment before he spoke with a little doubt, and his tone was not as tough as just now: "Even if it is the strength of our allies, it is not necessary for us to squander it like this......"

"Weaken our allies to maintain our rule. "When it comes to this, Accardo is much more professional than Brauchitsch. He presented Brauchitsch's report to Brauchitsch, mainly to show the marshal what was wrong with the basic tactics, and not for any other reason: "We must take Stalingrad as quickly as possible!"

Quchelel's tactics were nothing more than the purge of Stalingrad block by block. If you have to evaluate this tactical arrangement, the only accurate adjective is dull. At the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China, there was a founder of the Hunan army named Zeng Guofan, and the basic tactics he formulated for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were to "harden the village and fight a dumb battle", and as a result, this tactic was almost completely copied by Qu Hiller 80 years later, and he wrote a report and handed it to Accardo.

Qucheller divided the whole of Stalingrad into countless small pieces, and then each small square was cleared of contention. Hold the frontline area with heavy troops, and repeatedly fight with the enemy. His plan even accurately calculated the strength of the opponent to fight for a certain area several times and best destroy the opponent.

He also boldly persuaded Accardo to activate special forces to carry out repeated clearances in a small area to clear the enemy's army, so as to prevent the enemy from using sewers and other facilities to infiltrate and destroy. In order to deal with this tactic of the Soviet army, he proposed to use small elite forces to hold off the opponent, and then use large forces to encircle and annihilate them.

On the other hand, Qu Hiller didn't care about Rokossovsky's counterattack, he even felt that the counterattack would cause more casualties to the Soviet army, so he boldly speculated that Rokossovsky would give up the means of large-scale counterattack within a month. The German general was convinced that the German army's steady and gradual advance, and then the full occupation of Stalingrad, was the most economical and fastest way to fight.

He predicted that the Soviets would desperately defend Stalingrad and tried to hold out here for at least half a year. For this, the Soviet army should have invested more than 1 million troops. But when the whole city is in ruins, the advantage of the Soviet army will be completely lost, and it will become a place where the elite 300,000 infantry trained by the German army will gallop across the country.

And in his report, in order to temper these 300,000 elite infantry in Stalingrad, even if it is worth losing 300,000 people. At least he felt that it was very worthwhile to fight an elite N Army in three months to help the German army stabilize the forefront of the southern theater of operations.

"Complaining about losses, it doesn't help. Accardo said to Marshal Brauchitsch, who had a high reputation in the army: "You carefully study General Quchel's report on front-line operations, and if there are no problems, I will let him continue the offensive according to this plan." ”

"There is no problem with the planning ability, Qu Hillel is a general that I and many high-ranking army leaders are optimistic about, so as a front-line commander, the battle plan he drew up is undoubtedly without loopholes. Brauchitsch confidently and directly answered Accardo's question: "I am only worried that the losses will cause panic among the soldiers at the front and increase the war-weariness in the country." ”

"End Stalingrad as soon as possible, the long pain is better than the short pain. Accardo said with a sigh. If given a choice, he doesn't want to attack head-on to fight the most inefficient urban battles. But the current situation is that everything is out of his control.