Chapter 607 Transcaucasian Front

It makes sense that the Transcaucasian Front would be the weakest among all the troops. The Transcaucasus is located at the rear of the front... If the Don River defense line is the main defense line, it belongs to the rear.

In this way, if the enemy wants to attack the Transcaucasus, they must fight from the Don River defense line to the North Caucasus and then to the Transcaucasus. Even if the Soviet army fails, the defeated soldiers will retreat in waves, and the source of troops will not be a problem when they reach the Transcaucasus.

The problem is that the German army at this time did not take the usual route. They did not attack from the Don River in a step-by-step manner, but landed from the Kerch Strait, passed the Taman Peninsula, and then went straight to the Transcaucasus along the Black Sea coast. This completely exposed the rear of the Transcaucasus to the German army.

But even though the Transcaucasus was the rear of the Soviet army, its strength was far greater than that of the German army:

The 43rd Army of the Transcaucasian Front had a total of 9 divisions, plus an infantry division and a tank brigade directly under the front, with a total strength of 200,000.

If the German army does not count the air force, it has only 60,000 troops, which is less than one-third of the strength of a Soviet front.

This is one of the reasons why General Chulenev proposed to take the initiative.

However, General Chulenev did not consider one point: the vast majority of the 200,000 people in the Transcaucasian Front were newly recruited recruits, naval infantry and engineering auxiliary arms.

Engineering auxiliary arms, such as the 51st fortification area.

The Soviet army has a very distinctive arm, which is the fortification area, which is used to build complete fortifications, such as the fortifications in the Sevastopol Fortress before.

There were also some fortifications in Transcaucasus, but most of them were built on the Caucasus Mountains and faced north. At this time, the German army bypassed the Caucasus Mountains from the left wing, making these fortifications completely useless.

Another example is the 63rd Cavalry Division, which was basically useless during this period... There is a certain reason why the cavalry division has not been eliminated in the Soviet Union, because in the winter of the Soviet Union, cavalry is often more reliable than cars and tanks, but at other times these war horses are the best targets for machine guns.

Therefore, among the 200,000 people in the Transcaucasian Front, there are actually only three divisions and one brigade that can fight, the 9th and 20th Mountain Divisions, and the 417th Infantry Division and the 52nd Tank Brigade directly under the Front.

General Chulenev sent the 9th and 20th Mountain Divisions, and the 389th Infantry and 63rd Cavalry Divisions.

General Qiulenezh's idea was very simple. He would advance his troops to the Novorossiysk area and station them there. There were the Caucasus Mountains on the right wing and the Black Sea on the left wing. He could build a defense line with a mountain division and then make himself invincible. Then he would attack Solyon with two divisions in cooperation with the North Caucasus Front and use the cavalry division as a mobile force.

The idea was good, but the German army would not fight this battle according to his idea.

At nine o'clock that night, just after dark (it was dark around eight o'clock in May in the Soviet Union), the German troops set out from Solyon Airport and headed straight for Novorossiysk.

There was a reason why Novorossiysk became a battlefield. It was an important port city of the Soviet army. The military aid shipped from Egypt to the Soviet Union by Britain landed here and then was transported to the Soviet Union and other places through the northbound railway. Occupying this place not only meant cutting off this supply line, but also meant occupying the mountain pass leading to the Transcaucasus region.

It took the German vanguard more than three hours, or twelve o'clock, to arrive at the distance of more than 70 kilometers.

The reason why it was so slow was that it was very difficult for tanks to march at night, especially when the troops were mixed with tanks from the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States, Germany, and the Czech Republic. It was simply a hodgepodge.

This inconsistent equipment made the German army look a bit like a mob, but it looked one thing, and it was another thing when it really started fighting... Although the tanks were very chaotic, the drivers were all veterans who had experienced hundreds of battles.

On the contrary, the Soviet troops, even the elite troops called mountain divisions, were soldiers without combat experience.

"The Soviets set up the defense line three kilometers outside the city!" Manstein pointed to the map sent by the reconnaissance troops and said: "The defense line runs from the Black Sea to the Caucasus Mountains, five kilometers long and one kilometer deep, and the cavalry division is arranged at the end!"

"What is the specific deployment of the troops?" Colonel Slaine asked.

"We don't know!" Manstein replied.

Then he added: "Because the Soviets themselves don't know!"

At first, the officers didn't understand what Manstein said. After the explanation, they realized that...it turned out that the German scouts captured several prisoners and wanted to ask them for information, but they got a lot of confusing and even contradictory information.

The German scouts were unwilling to accept it, and captured several more prisoners.

Later, the scouts realized that it was not the Soviet prisoners who deceived them, but the Soviet soldiers themselves were not sure where their troops were responsible for guarding...The Soviet army's orders were issued in a rather hasty manner. They usually resolved conflicts through verbal instructions, and did not issue detailed written plans and timetables to the troops. This directly caused the Soviet army's chaos on the Novorossiysk defense line.

For example, the three divisions used for the attack thought that they would set out to attack Solyonie tomorrow morning, so they tried to transport their supplies and equipment forward to the defense line of the 20th Mountain Division responsible for defense. The 20th Mountain Division found that the follow-up troops entered their defense line and suspected that they had built fortifications in the wrong place, so some troops pushed the defense line forward again. In the end, even the Soviet soldiers themselves were a little confused.

In the end, the German scouts had to give up... because they couldn't figure out what even the Soviet soldiers couldn't figure out.

This of course added some jokes to the German officers.

"That is to say!" Manstein pointed to the map and said: "Their four divisions are crowded in the three-kilometer range from the defense line to Novorossiysk, and at least so far they haven't discovered us coming!"

This seems a little difficult to understand, because the German army at this time has more than 100 tanks, and their movements on the march are not small. Just arrange a few teams of scouts between Solyonie and Novorossiysk to discover the German army.

But the Soviets did not do this, because they received the order to attack Solyony, and they did not expect the Germans to launch a counterattack.

"Destroy these troops!" Manstein said at last: "I said destroy, not defeat, because if we just defeat them... they will flee back to the Transcaucasus and become our new trouble!"