The air was still so dry, and when winter was about to go away, there seemed to be no rain in the whole of Russia, but the roads here were muddy because of the melting snow, and there seemed to be one more factor that affected the speed of the German advance: irritating mud and potholes.

The German army on the front line is now in a good state, at least the two main German forces in the south and the center have now entered a state of stagnation. The forces of Rundstedt and Kluge halted their advance after besieging Smolensk, and the Germans in the south did not advance further after advancing to the Volga valley and threatening Stalingrad.

However, this did not mean that the muddy roads did not cause problems for the Germans, and the long supply lines made the German logistics units very depressed, and they had to fight against the muddy and broken roads, and deliver all kinds of supplies needed at the front to the combat troops on time.

This is a war that cannot be seen, and this is a complex project on a huge scale that is even more devastating than the front-line operations. The German logistics units were even more numerous than the front-line combat units, and they fought desperately against all kinds of adverse factors, and had no other advantages than the front-line combat units except for safety.

"Slow, slow, do you know how expensive this equipment is!" a German railroad soldier was directing a locomotive pushing a carriage full of rails along the railroad that was being repaired bit by bit. He was flanked by a group of German sappers and a number of requisitioned Ukrainian civilians who were unloading a section of rails from the carriage and fastening them to the sleepers in their prescribed positions.

Further on, there were more than a dozen large trucks, piled with new sleepers, which some soldiers and civilians were in full swing mixing with the old sleepers of the railway, and then mixing them one by one, and arranging them one by one, to turn them into railways that met the European standards of density.

Due to historical reasons, in fact, in Ukraine and Belarus, the rails are divided into three different standards, namely the European standard rails implemented by Germany, the backward and ancient narrow gauges, and some are the broad gauges of the Soviet standard - although the rails built with German aid are all European standards, but in Ukraine and Belarus, this is barely about half of the number.

The rest of the railroad tracks need to be remodeled, but building railroads is not an easy task, at least in wartime, it is a very resource-intensive thing, hundreds of tons of steel have to be turned into rails, not tanks, for the German army, which has insufficient production capacity and resources, it is an extremely painful thing.

"Bang dang!" one railroad track was accurately placed on the sleeper by dozens of people and soldiers, and on the other side there were soldiers and soldiers slowly placing another one, and the construction site was in trouble, and there were some German technicians with instruments and equipment in the distance, discussing how to improve some uneven sections and erect more parallel railway lines.

The German sappers fixed the position of the rails and sleepers, and then began to embed the railway nails on them, and the speed of construction was already very fast according to the usual concept, but this kind of almost crazy railway reconstruction progress still could not meet the needs of the German army.

"I've heard that the restoration work over there is going on quite quickly, and it's basically able to keep the transportation smooth. An officer of the engineering department stood on a hillside not far away with his hands behind his back, along with the SS officers in charge of the security of the railroad laying troops, as well as officials of the local pro-German government in Belarus.

"After all, there were not many railways that met the standards of the Third Reich in the Soviet Union, and these railways were also the key targets of destruction when the Soviet Red Army retreated. The SS officer looked at the railroad tracks in the distance at a speed visible to the naked eye and said: "Under the protection of the SS soldiers, the repair of these railways is going well, but it is not enough to meet the needs of the front-line troops. ”

The commander of the engineering unit sneered, after all, he had the rank of colonel on his shoulder, and he was already a real senior officer among the front-line commanders in the logistics troops: "The front, whether it is the officers or soldiers on the front line, has never been satisfied. When they were given oil, they were short of food, and when they were sent food, they were short of ammunition, and after they were sent ammunition, they burned the oil. ”

The SS officer nodded, agreeing with his temporary superior: "Yes, but they did attack quickly, and now the farthest unit is less than 30 kilometers from Stalingrad." And I've heard that because of the use of special forces and helicopters for faster propulsion, the railway line there is still relatively intact, which is even more difficult. ”

In fact, the railroad tracks of the Southern Route were the best in the Soviet Union because of the relationship between the previous Soviet-German cooperation period. There were a few railways built entirely by the Germans, and there were also more complete supporting facilities, and most of them became resources for the Germans to use, except for some that were destroyed by the Soviets when they retreated.

On the one hand, because there are oil fields in the Caucasus in the south, it was best built during the Soviet-German honeymoon period, and on the other hand, because the oil fields in the Caucasus are too important to the German army, Germany invested the entire 4 army groups in order to open up the situation in the Caucasus.

However, the German troops of the four army groups put more pressure on the logistics than originally estimated, and at least for the time being, these railroad tracks, which were built with great difficulty, were only enough to maintain about half of the supplies for these army groups.

In the central region, Rundstedt's Army Group A and Kluger's Army Group F were relatively small, but after they crossed Minsk, there were no more railroad tracks to use, and although several Soviet trains were captured in the area near Orsha to transport supplies, they were still a drop in the bucket.

The German army lacked tank trucks to transport oil, and these equipment were not many high-level equipment in China, and it was difficult to supplement production in a short time, while similar equipment in the Soviet Union was in Forte, and since the Soviet-German war, only a small amount was captured by the Germans. Broad-gauge tank trucks were even more scarce, and the Germans had so far only enough broad-gauge tank trains to support Army Group A's operations.

"Let the soldiers work harder! Complain to complain, at least we don't have to die, do we? The engineer colonel said to his lieutenant behind him: "Lay this track to Orsha as soon as possible, and in this way, we can save a lot of capacity." ”

"Report!" Before the sapper colonel's ambitions had even begun, someone came to pour cold water on her. A signal soldier walked uphill and panted to report to him a not-so-good news: "Colonel, the news has just come that a detachment of Soviet partisans has attacked a section of our railway in Belarus, a military train has been destroyed, we have lost more than 40 people, and we have lost about 4 tons of grain. ”

"What about the nearby SS patrols, and what do they eat?" asked the SS officer, who was responsible for securing the railway, with a frown.

The SS then arrived and salvaged the remaining supplies, extinguishing the Soviets and annihilating the Soviets who had attacked the train. But the two carriages had been burned down, and there was nothing they could do. The signal soldier looked at the message and answered another officer's question.

The pressure of the war was felt by all, and man-made sabotage complicated many problems, and the delicate scheduling that the Germans did best was turned into a disaster when train transportation was staged. They rely on dense and well-calculated train schedules to get the most out of their main railway lines, but if there is a problem at one point, it often leads to large-scale rail transportation paralysis.

In the German mainland, supplies from the Western Front to the Eastern Front could be transported almost at an astonishing rate, and the effectiveness of the main railway lines was brought into full play. But after the train enters Poland and then reaches Minsk, the speed is doubled, and further east, from Minsk to the vicinity of Smolensk, the speed is tripled.

Just a slowdown, maybe the German army can still bear it, but the rise in transportation costs really made the German army collapse a little. Often when a barrel of oil is transported to the front line in the east, it means that another barrel of oil is consumed on the road, which is what makes the German army, which is short of supplies, the most dissatisfied.

"The Führer has already decided to set up places for stockpiling supplies in Poland and in a number of places in Belarus. At least in the coming months, we will work to improve the conditions for the transportation of supplies in the rear and to combat the growing Soviet partisans. The SS officer looked in the direction of the west, as if to say to himself, and to the engineer colonel beside him: "The rest depends on where our railroad can be laid." ”

"Bang!" another section of rail landed heavily on a neat row of sleepers, and there was a muffled sound. The German sappers struck the nails with hammers, one after another, sweating like rain, desperately building the endless railway, desperately repairing the railway that seemed to never be repaired.

"We'll do our best to pave it, try our best to pave it. The engineer colonel stared at the railroad that was not far away, and then extended a little forward, squinted his eyes and said: "However, the enemy is trying to destroy these railways by all means, and our own generals want us to lay more railways, I really don't know when it will end......