Iron Cross

Footsteps sounded in the Kremlin, and then converged at the same place. Just before Hoffman secretly arrived at the front line for final mobilization, the Soviet Supreme Command was also conducting in-depth discussions on the current situation and the direction of the war.

The Red Army suffered a severe defeat in the Battle of Spring Awakening. Not only did it lose large tracts of territory in the Caucasus and Transcaucasus, it also lost the very critical Baku oil field area, and also lost hundreds of thousands of troops and a large amount of equipment. Originally, according to Zhukov and Vasilevsky's idea of ​​quickly disengaging, the Red Army could still die a few fewer people. However, Stalin first forced Rokossovsky to retreat due to the stimulation of the Katyn incident. Originally, he only needed to lose 100,000 soldiers. 2, but in the end three armies were lost; later when faced with a large corps attack, Tyulenev insisted on holding on to Grozny in order to transport oil field equipment. As a result, not much equipment was transported, and most of the troops remaining there were wiped out.

In the end, the reason why the Germans gave up the pursuit was not because Manstein had no strength. On the contrary, it was because he was unwilling to lose precious armored units in the mud when the muddying period came. Now the weather has become the most advantageous weapon of the Red Army. The Germans do not fight in the cold or turn to water (twice a year, spring is long and autumn is short), and they are unable to move for at least 4-5 months a year. But even so, the Red Army still felt overwhelmed.

Naturally, someone must take responsibility for a defeat. Although Zhukov and Vasilevsky made errors in judgment in the early stages of the battle, their mid-course adjustments and timely organization of retreats were quite effective, which partially made up for their mistakes. Stalin, who bears the highest responsibility, did not People dared to pursue the case, but they only dealt with figures who were too low-level and were unable to communicate internally and externally within the party. In the end, this unlucky guy fell on Tyulenev. Since the loss of the Caucasus, especially the Transcaucasus, has an overall impact, it is not unfair to deal with the commander of the front army who is responsible for defending the territory. As soon as the smoke on the front line came to an end, the Supreme Command issued an order to abolish the Caucasus Front and organize all its troops into the three Southwest, Don, and Stalingrad fronts.

Fortunately, Tyulenev always followed the General Secretary closely and did not have serious conflicts with other colleagues. During the great purges, he also found ways to protect a group of people. In addition, everyone knew that he was actually a scapegoat, so everyone came forward to defend him. To put it mildly, the final result of his personal treatment was not serious: he was demoted one level, sent to the rear to supervise military production, and worked as an errand under Voroshilov. Compared with the situation when General Pavlov, the commander of the Western Front Army, returned and directly The fate of being shot was considered to be raised high and then lowered gently.

During the rest period, the Red Army also tried its best to consolidate its strength. Now the situation facing the southern flank is no longer the threat of the 1.5 or 1.6 million troops of Army Group South led by Manstein. After Rommel's Middle East Army entered the battlefield, Iran, After Turkey and Turkey joined the war with a total of more than 700,000 troops, the Red Army General Staff estimated that the enemy troops on the southern flank had reached 2.5 million, and the entire front now stretched from Voronezh to Astrakhan, which is only more than 1,200 kilometers. Much shorter than last fall. On the one hand, the enemy army increased its strength, and on the other hand, the defense line shortened. The pressure faced by the Red Army was increasing day by day.

In order to quickly increase his strength, Stalin spared no expense. In addition to the Caucasus Front being dismantled and replenished, Konev's Steppe Military District was directly drained. Nearly 300,000 troops were transferred to the southern flank to join the replenishment, and then the reserve base camp in the direction of Moscow remained. The 250,000 troops of the Central Asian Military Region and the 150,000 troops of the Central Asian Military District were also fully dimmed. After adding 700,000 troops, the southern front line still had only 2.3 million troops. Not only was it less than the Axis Army in quantity, but its quality was extremely inferior.

Finally, the base camp made up its mind and mobilized another 350,000 troops from the Far East. Together with the new soldiers gathered in the Ural region, a total of 500,000 troops were gathered to form the Central Front Army. However, there were disagreements over the appointment of the commander. Zhukov strongly recommended Konev as the commander. Commander of the Front Army, but Stalin had never had a good impression of Konev. He believed that when he was serving in the Western Front, he repeatedly opposed the attack on the Rzhev-Vyazma salient and was "fearful of difficulties." He did not agree to let him take this position. The important commander position was finally decided to be held by Bagramyan.

Speaking of this past incident, Konev was actually tricked to death by Hoffman. If we follow the historical trend and the Western Front launches "Operation Mars" according to Zhukov's plan, it will encounter the strong defense of Model's 9th Army. As a result, The Soviet army lost nearly 1.5 million and was unable to capture this salient, resulting in a unique disastrous defeat. Konev's attitude against the offensive was undoubtedly correct. Of course, Army Group Center also lost more than 300,000 men for this, and all the mobile forces on the Eastern Front were filled in, so that it could not reinforce the Sixth Army in the direction of Stalingrad - Paulus was finished.

Unexpectedly, after crossing, the Führer implemented the strategy of "abandoning the salient and leveling the front." Meretskov's Western Front used only more than 300,000 troops to capture two important salients that the German army had voluntarily abandoned - Lejeux. The Russian Bulge and the Demyansk Bulge were recovered, and the "pistol facing Moscow's chest" was recovered. The losses were nothing compared to the results. Nakonev's opinion against the offensive was so wrong that to the point of This impression cannot be reversed now! Of course, as a result, the German losses were much less, just over 30,000. It was by virtue of this battle loss ratio of 1:10 that Model ascended to the high position of commander of Army Group Center.

Speaking of which, Meretskov was an unlucky guy before. In 1940, he was still the Chief of the General Staff, with a much higher status than Zhukov and Vasilevsky. However, because he, as the chief director of the autumn exercise, preferred the defeated Belarusian Military District Commander Pavlov to the victorious Kiev Military District Commander Zhukov, he was removed from the position of Chief of the General Staff and became the Deputy Defense Committee member in charge of air defense at the suggestion of Timoshenko.

As a result, he worked in this position for more than a year. Within a month before the implementation of the Barbarossa plan, three German planes entered the Soviet airspace from different airspaces (two landed safely and one made an emergency landing). He was identified as a spy again. Under Beria's instructions, he was beaten to death by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Meretskov, who could not bear it, was forced to admit that he participated in a fictitious spy group and was almost shot directly, but the Barbarossa raid saved him - the Ministry of Internal Affairs had no time to kill people. Three months later, as the front line was losing ground, Stalin, who was desperate, thought of Meretskov again and took him out of prison to join the war. He was first in charge of an army group, and then served as the commander of the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts.

Meretskov's luck finally turned. He first tried his best to save Leningrad, and then made meritorious service in the defense of Moscow. After Timoshenko's disastrous defeat in May 1942, Meretskov, who was "favored by the emperor", completely overwhelmed his political enemies and made a good impression in Stalin's mind. By September, after Stalin's hint, Zhukov was ready to launch the Mars Campaign to seize the Rzhev-Vyazma line. Timoshenko, Konev and others opposed it, but Meretskov clearly expressed his support, believing that he could command the troops of the Western Front to fight, and even issue a military order - if he lost, he would be shot! The result was a great success. The goal of the campaign was achieved with only a loss of 300,000 troops. Not only was Stalin extremely happy, but Zhukov, who planned the battle plan, also rose to the clouds.

This victory greatly consolidated Meretskov's position, not only deepened the relationship with Zhukov, but also completely pushed Timoshenko into the abyss - now Stalin was completely too lazy to listen to the latter's words, and Konev was completely an accidental injury. Fortunately, Zhukov was protected, so the problem was not too big.

The "Mars" campaign was a rare battle in which both the Soviet and German armies believed that they were the winners: the Soviet army lost 300,000 and took back the important ground, and the German army achieved a high exchange ratio of nearly 1:10.

With various unconventional means, the headquarters restored the strength of the southern wing to about 2.8 million. Originally, according to Zhukov's idea, at least one more front had to be drawn. His target was the Bryansk Front with more than 500,000 troops. But Stalin rejected the request and only agreed to let the front cooperate with the southern wing, but it was still affiliated with the Moscow direction.

Therefore, the intelligence that Galen submitted to Hoffman was not very accurate: although the Steppe Military District behind the Bryansk Front still maintained its reputation, it was either composed of middle-aged men in their 40s or 50s, or outright female soldiers, and it was impossible for them to provide any support. Their combat effectiveness was probably not even as good as the temporarily armed Toth Organization Labor Front - at least there were young and strong laborers there; and although the reputation and approximate strength of the Central Front were known, the German army was not aware that there were many Far Eastern troops in it - their combat effectiveness was slightly stronger than the troops that had been fighting on the southern wing for many years; there was only one point that Galen made very clear, that the Central Asian direction was extremely empty, and except for a few troops on the coast of the Caspian Sea, the millions of square kilometers of Central Asian hinterland were completely undefended.

On the other hand, the Red Army's intelligence detectives on the German army also had many misunderstandings: although it had decided to implement the Tambov plan, the headquarters was still located in Smolensk. The distance between the two was too far, and the two could not connect the action; the main gathering place of the Eastern Army Group, which served as the Eastern Front reserve, was Orel, which the Soviet side had already known, but they could not judge whether it was true. In terms of intelligence work, it was basically in a state of half a catty and eight a catty.

"Comrade General Secretary, based on the intelligence we have and the recent surge in enemy telegraph signals, the enemy's next attack is imminent, but the headquarters and the General Staff still have differences on what the enemy's main goal is, and there are corresponding difficulties in the allocation of troops." Facing the map, Vasilevsky first introduced the general troop situation.