Based on his experience, the Soviet army would lose more than 1 million troops in the Battle of Stalingrad, which was undoubtedly a huge loss for the entire Soviet Union. Even if Stalingrad is held with such losses, how many young people will be left of the Soviet Union?

This was not a good ending, at least not for the USSR. At that time, even if the Soviet Union won the war, if it wants to recover, it will take decades of accumulation anyway, and in the future of decades of rapid change, will the Soviet Union still be a hegemonic country in the world?

Of course, these are not the issues that Rokossovsky needs to consider, and now the question before him is simpler, whether Stalingrad can be saved in the end. It's a very simple question, but it's really hard to answer, and everything will have to wait until this counterattack to achieve what kind of effect it can achieve.

Rokossovsky then looked through his fingers covering his face at the large map of the city in front of him, thinking that his troops would be able to recapture the lost defensive positions, and that they would be able to hold those places and give their own transport and supply ships enough respite.

......

On the German position, the sound of gunfire broke the due silence, and a German rifle shooter hiding behind a window fired the first bullet to stop the advance of the Soviet army, and after a single shot, a young Soviet soldier fell to the ground, and the bloody battle began.

The machine guns began to roar, and one Soviet soldier after another was knocked down by bullets, but the attack continued, and blood splattered in the ruins, enveloping everything around them in a red atmosphere. Brutal killings and a sense of decisiveness spread everywhere until the German defenses were breached.

On the German position, which had long been in ruins, a Soviet soldier was examining his wounds, and a bullet hit his rib bone, punching a hole in his clothes, but only bruising his body, so he gritted his teeth and wiped the blood with his hands, and then pressed the wound with a clean handkerchief.

At his feet, there were still the bodies of two German soldiers who had been shot and died, but judging by their attire, they should be some Ukrainian soldiers. Because these people wore SS uniforms, and there were no regular epaulettes and unit number identification. It was a custom in the Soviet forces to arrest soldiers in SS uniforms and execute them summarily because they had little affection for anyone in black uniforms.

In the German army, the men in black SS uniforms were either executioners, the elite of the armored forces that killed countless people, or the Ukrainian servant army that had defected to the Soviet Union. These three kinds of people were dealt with by the Soviet side in line with the principle of killing if they could be killed and not letting go, which was very cruel and bloody, but it was also very reasonable.

The battle has just ended, many of the bullet holes on the walls are still emitting light smoke, the Soviet soldiers are working hard to clean the battlefield, seeing that the temperature is getting higher and higher, the corpses will decompose and deteriorate faster and faster, if you don't deal with the corpses of these dead soldiers as soon as possible, then there is no need for the two sides to fight, this place will soon become a giant bacterial petri dish ravaged by the plague.

In such a short assault operation, almost 300 Soviet soldiers were killed. And look at the positions, the Ukrainians left only 50 corpses. This ratio annoyed the attacking Soviet units - the Ukrainians' defensive positions were so perfectly arranged that the Germans must have been on the sidelines to guide them. The crossfire alternately entered the battle, which caught the Soviet army by surprise, and if it were not for the last hit of the Soviets' tanks, it is possible that this attack would have really been so futile.

The battle will continue, after all, this time the Soviet army's operational purpose is to counterattack as much as possible to gain strategic space, and with this goal constraint, the Soviet troops will try to keep attacking forward.

A Soviet T-34 tank, which was mass-produced in Stalingrad without even being painted, was mass-produced in Stalingrad, had no official number, and was incorporated into the front-line combat units for as long as it could. Even in such harsh conditions of war, the tank factories in Stalingrad did not stop production, repairing damaged weapons and equipment for the troops, and also taking time to assemble half of the tanks that had been produced and handed them over to the defenders.

"Keep going. We must recapture as many defensive positions as possible and get the Germans out of our city!" a Soviet commander shouted encouragement to his men, while the Soviet soldiers mechanically stood up, carrying their weapons and moving on.

......

"General! The Soviet counterattack began, and as you might expect, they were expanding the length of their connection to the Volga, which was used to cover the losses of their ships to replenish their troops at night. A staff officer handed the news from the front to Qu Hillel, who was looking at the map, and then spoke.

Qu Hillel pointed to his ear, and then joked very indifferently: "Yes, I heard it, the problem is the direction of their counterattack, and the strength of the counterattack." ”

A staff officer began to mark on the map what had been lost according to the reports of some troops, and it was clear that the direction of the Soviet attack had spread roughly throughout the map, and it was not an exaggeration to say that this counterattack was the greatest test that the German army had faced since the attack on Stalingrad.

"Oh, attack north and south...... That's easy to explain, but what is this doing to fight back west?" Qu Hillel put his hand on his chin, stared at the map and asked to himself, "Is it because you want to use this counterattack to test how tough I am?"

As he spoke, he thought about the next way to deal with it, and finally he pressed his hand on the map, and then made up his mind: "Rokossovsky, since you want to know how tough my attitude is towards Qu Hillel, then I will let you see why I was approved by the Führer to be the commander-in-chief of this Army Group N!"

"All front-line troops are ordered to hold the line and not to retreat. Now that he had figured out what he was going to do, he didn't hesitate any longer. He immediately ordered his subordinates to convey the adjustments made by the General Headquarters to the Soviet counterattack this time: "Mobilize the 9th SS Panzer Division to launch a counterattack from the north to the south, and I will shorten the occupied area of the Soviet army along the Volga River by at least 2 kilometers before sunset!"

"Long live the Führer!" a SS division commander saluted, then turned and walked out of the headquarters of Quchler. Under the command of Qucheller's Army Group N, the most elite is the 14th Panzer Corps of the Wehrmacht, and the most elite armored unit of this army is the 9th Panzer Division of the SS.

"The rest of the 14th Panzer Army, engaged in the counterattack from the front, repelled the Soviet attack. Qu Hillel sneered, and then continued to give the battle order, this time he not only wanted to repel the Soviet attack, but to thwart the Soviet counterattack, and directly let the troops turn into a full-front counterattack.

So this time he was not stingy at all, but scattered all the most elite combat units in his hands, ready to use the German army's regular troops to give Rokossovsky on the opposite side a ruthless blow.

In the southernmost direction of Stalingrad, the Germans also committed two infantry divisions, together with Ukrainian troops, to launch a full-line attack on the Soviet army. It's not just Rokossovsky waiting for the opportunity to counterattack, Quchell is not waiting, waiting for the moment when the Soviet army can't sit still and it will be beneficial to the German army.

"It's easy to thwart your attack!" General Rokossovsky. I'm just waiting, waiting to see when you lose your patience. Now it seems that you have less patience than I estimated, probably because you can't afford to lose, right?" Quchell asked the map in front of him, though it was impossible for the map to answer any of his questions. But he continued there and asked, "Now I'll show my cards to see if you're bigger than mine." ”

......

"Bell, bell!" The telephone on the desk of the German front command rang, and a division commander walked up to the phone, grabbed the receiver, and then replied immediately: "Your Excellency, General! Yes! We are ready for battle! We are ready to attack at any time! Yes! Yes! Long live Führer Accardo? Rudolph! The Reich will win!"

After hanging up the phone, the division commander looked back at the Ukrainian general next to him who was wearing an SS uniform, but only a Ukrainian Order of Freedom on his chest, and cracked his mouth and laughed: "This time we will attack together, and your people can take a good look at how the grenadiers of the Third Reich fought." ”

On one side of the street, the German machine-gun position was being suppressed by the Soviet tanks, and many Ukrainian soldiers had been driven out of the trenches by the Soviet infantry, while on the other side of the street, a German Leopard tank was slowly advancing, and behind this Leopard tank, there was a No. 3 short-barreled assault gun of the Ukrainian army.

A German commander is checking with his Ukrainian front-line commander that the entire attack plan will be carried out at the same time, and the Germans' well-planned coordination is a powerful example here.

"At 12 o'clock in the afternoon, the counterattack will start on time. The German officer put down his arm with the watch and said to his Ukrainian colleague with a smile. The Ukrainian officer gave a military salute and nodded with a serious expression.

Just when the German front-line troops were busy, in the field airfield behind, one German fighter plane after another was taking off, and in the sky not far away, a bomber unit of three planes and a formation was gathering, and a huge counterattack was brewing.