Five Hundred and Forty Retreat

On the eastern front, on the positions of the 44th Infantry Division, a busy scene. The German soldiers were sorting out their luggage. They were ordered to retreat to the area west of the Dnieper River for defense.

Although their current position is only tens of kilometers away from Kharkov, they still faithfully carried out the orders above, and left this dangerous position before the Soviet troops on the opposite side counterattacked.

"Hurry up! Move quickly!" A German officer stood on the car, watching his busy men carrying all kinds of munitions. The degree of mechanization of the German infantry units is not as high as that of the armored units, and in most cases it still depends on manpower to solve the problem.

For example, now, the infantrymen of the 44th Infantry Division are helping the division artillery to carry large-caliber shells. These howitzers were shipped from France. Although it seems a bit outdated now, these cannons made up for the embarrassing situation of the lack of large-caliber artillery in the German army to a certain extent.

Many artillerymen of the German army are now using cannons from other countries, including French howitzers, Dutch and Belgian howitzers. These cannons messed up the logistics of the German artillery, but they had to be used.

The current life of the German infantry is not as easy as imagined. These soldiers follow behind the armored units, and they only have a boring journey every day, and they are also responsible for transporting many other military supplies.

"Pile those tents on the carriage! Yes, pile them up! Fix them with ropes so they don't fall off halfway!" A company commander of the supply battalion was asking the soldiers to put the tents for camping on the carriage. For the infantry, the equipment of cars is still too extravagant. Only some of the main mechanized regiments in the division are equipped with cars.

Most of the troops are still using primitive equipment such as war horses, and some troops even have donkeys. They rely on these animals to pull carts and complete the terminal transportation of most of the materials of the German troops. Don't underestimate these carriage mule carts, they can be said to be the most reliable "Mercedes-Benz cars" for the German transport troops.

The German tanks were galloping fast, fighting all the way forward. On the road behind, the German infantry could only use their own legs to keep chasing and chasing. These soldiers carried rifles and stepped on the muddy ground wearing riding boots. They have to give way to cars, so most of the time they can only hobble along the sides of the road.

Unlike armored troops who can stack their luggage on vehicles, they have to carry most of their luggage on their own. There are raincoats, sapper shovels, gas masks, ammunition, and a change of socks and underwear. It is definitely not an easy job to carry a pile of junk on the vast plain, so more soldiers are used to discarding some less important things to reduce their burden.

In order to save these wastes, the troops had to use horse-drawn carriages to go forward with the soldiers, and each company was equipped with a horse-drawn carriage to hold tents, engineering shovels and other materials. Later, this method gradually became popular, so each carriage of the infantry had to help transport a few shells to the artillery unit of the unit to which it belonged.

It can also be regarded as making up for the disaster caused by the chaotic shell model to the logistics supply.

"What the hell, did we retreat after an order from above?" A veteran soldier cursed with a g43 rifle on his back and a cigarette in his mouth: "How long did it take you to get to this position? Say, we're going to be on the road for a few days."

Another young soldier smiled and piled the ammunition boxes for the machine gun on the carriage beside him, and nodded: "Isn't it? We walked for ten days to get here, and dug trenches here for several days, and finally a Order, let's go back to the place we started a few days ago, we really have nothing to do."

Following the order, the long line of infantry began to set off. A few trucks rumbled across the dirt road, kicking up dust all over the sky, and drove towards the end of the road in the distance amidst the curses of German soldiers. More infantry were scattered on both sides of the road, walking in the direction they came in groups.

Some soldiers sat around the carriages. Because of the several days of fighting, they had consumed a lot of ammunition and supplies, so there were spare carriages, which were used as a tool to transport wounded soldiers. Of course, some thick-skinned soldiers also squeezed in, holding a lot of rifles and laughing as they watched the surrounding soldiers rush on their way.

The surrounding soldiers put their weapons on the vehicle, so they had nothing to do. However, they still carried heavy bags and hurried on both sides of the road with difficulty. For them, this war didn't seem to have much to do with fighting. Apart from hurrying, they had nothing to do but hurry.

"The 44th Division is retreating. They are the closest troops to Kharkov. The Soviet troops did not pursue them. They don't seem to have expected that our troops will retreat at this time." The staff officer handed over the front-line documents to Gudeli Ann, whose troops are retreating from near Kharkov, ceding much of the occupied Ukrainian territory.

According to the combat deployment requirements of the General Staff, his G Army must retract its extended tentacles, deploy defensive positions along the Dnieper River, and shorten the defensive front. Although such a decision has almost given up one-third of the Ukrainian region, it can steadily deploy troops along the river and save limited troops.

"Our troops in Belarus are also shrinking, giving up positions near Minsk. The Soviet troops also did not pursue them. The defensive counterattack in Poland has already beaten the Soviets out of temper. They dare not take the initiative to launch a counterattack in the short term. .” Guderian nodded, and he had every reason to believe that the Soviet troops would not launch counterattack operations in the short term.

It is impossible for any general to bear the loss of more than 2 million soldiers in a short period of time and launch a counterattack when the enemy actively retreats-if it is another trap set by the German army, the Soviet Union will be completely lost. The Germans needed time to recover, and it was clear that the Soviets needed time to mend the wounds of the war.

The large-scale elastic defensive positions deployed by the German army in Poland and the pre-ambush counterattack adopted in the later period left too many nightmares for the Soviet generals. Many Soviet soldiers thought of the tragic event of retreating hundreds of kilometers from eastern Poland. During the process, they all felt their own shudder. The unexpected cover-up of the German armored forces until the siege of Kiev is a classic defensive counterattack tactic, and this process can be directly written into military textbooks.

During the entire Eastern Front for more than a month, the German soldiers killed 110,000 soldiers and injured 280,000 soldiers, killed 700,000 Soviet soldiers, and captured 1.5 million people at the same time, accounting for almost half of the troops deployed in the west of the Soviet Union. . This brilliant victory encouraged the German side, and some generals even began to discuss in private that the head of state's war strategy against the Soviet Union was too conservative, and Germany was fully capable of capturing the Soviet capital, Moscow, before winter came.

This voice was deliberately ignored by the Führer, and the guidelines of the German Supreme Command have always adopted the "New Barbarossa" plan drawn up by Manstein, ignoring military recommendations for a large-scale invasion of the Soviet Union.

Berlin, the residence of the Führer, Akado looked at the aging Augustus, and his heart was full of emotion: "Prime Minister, I know that those generals have been muttering in front of you all day about expanding the scale of the war on the Eastern Front. But , you know our plan, we are really not ready to invade the Soviet Union."

Germany is indeed not ready to enter a full-scale war. Although it seems to have achieved a brilliant victory in the Western Front War, it also has a problem: Germany won the whole war too quickly, which led to the fact that some of the materials gradually hoarded during the war were actually very large. limited.

For example, the German army lacks cotton coats. The German high-level has been working hard to solve this problem. The officers of the logistics department tried their best to hoard cotton and turn the cotton into winter clothes and transport it to western Ukraine, but it was still not enough to meet the needs of the huge number of Wehrmacht soldiers.

Don't think that it is very easy to prepare cotton clothes for the 3.5 million troops. Everyone has received their own school uniforms in school. It is just a clothing distribution project for 500 people in a battalion. If the scale is nearly 10,000 times larger, and the area stretches for hundreds of kilometers, does anyone still think it is too much to give the head of the logistics department the rank of general?

It is definitely a logistical challenge for the army to spend the winter in the wild. The German army has not yet established a complete logistics support system in the Soviet Union. If they attack all the way east to Moscow, it is a gamble to take out the elite German troops. And Akado knew that it was probably a gamble that lost everything.

When you are not sure, lengthen your own supply transportation line and shorten the opponent's supply line, this is what a fool will do. All the way to attack is to lengthen the distance between your own troops and the rear. It will become more and more difficult to retreat the wounded, replenish personnel, transfer supplies, and repair weapons and equipment. The city of Moscow is an end, not the end of victory. , but the terminus of the troops leading to hell.

"I know what the head of state means." Augustus nodded. Over the past year's hard work has made his health worse and worse. Although the medical treatment environment in Berlin can be said to be the best in the world, it still cannot stop this Mr. Prime Minister is getting old: "So I recruited Brauchitsch and others to hold a situation analysis meeting on the Eastern Front in Berlin, so that the military people know that they are far from being ready for a huge war. .”

Augustus sighed a little, even Akado didn't know what he was thinking. In fact, what he sighed in his heart was that in 1914, there was no one in Germany who could see the situation as clearly as Akado. If there was such a person at that time, Germany might go further...