Chapter 900 Soviet Counterattack (1)

Shaoken never expected that the phrase "falling into a pit" would not only apply to the Brazilian army's upcoming offensive, but also to the Red Army that had launched a counterattack in the Caucasus plain.

On May 10, the Red Army broke through the passes of the Caucasus after paying heavy sacrifices. The next day, the main force of the Red Army, led by Chernyakhovsky, rushed north from the Kuba line, and together with some troops crossing from the Caspian Sea, they repelled the enemy in front of them.

Two days later, the Red Army occupied Grozny, and more than 200,000 troops spread out in a fan shape to pursue the Axis forces facing them.

On May 16, Comrade Stalin delivered a passionate speech in Moscow, defining the offensive as a "Soviet counterattack." In addition to the Central Asian Special Front, all the main forces of the three southern flank armies took action. General Yereomenko, the commander of the Stalingrad Front who was responsible for defending the left wing of Stalingrad and guarding the line from Stalingrad to Astrakhan, acted the fastest and directly sent two armies south to attack, cooperating with Cherniaho. During the Soviet offensive, General Vatutin's Southwest Front and General Rokossovsky's Don Front were concerned about the German superiority, so they only sent 1-2 armies to contain the attack.

Stalin was very dissatisfied with this, but he could not do anything to Vatutin and Rokossovsky for the time being, and he also knew in his heart that the reason why Yereomenko was so quick was not because he had no military judgment. There is no risk, which is a consistent manifestation of his political speculation - his slogans are loud and his chest is beating loudly, but he can't get anything done. Of course, Yereomenko is still a bit cunning. He did not suffer any losses in the Don River series of battles, so he cannot be removed.

Both Zhukov and Vasilevsky believed that the reason why Yereomenko's performance in the fight was so-so was based on preconditions. He relied on Malinovsky and Chuikov for the fight. Now these two One of them formed an independent group army (implied commander of the reserve front), and the other blocked the Sherna cluster in Central Asia, so both of them warned Yereomenko about his reckless behavior and told him not to be so impulsive.

However, the development of the situation was far beyond the expectations of Zhukov and Vasilevsky. The Klestri Sea Front, which was confronting Yereomenko's troops, actually began to retreat and ran for more than 150 kilometers in one breath, directly covering the entire northern Caucasus grassland. All gave way. Then Yeremenko commanded the troops to advance rapidly, and it was actually his troops that controlled the largest area.

The dissatisfied Yeremenko reported to Moscow, implying that Zhukov and Vasilevsky were suppressing him. Stalin himself was on the rise and was naturally dissatisfied with such a conservative style, but he knew that Zhukov had been working hard and was able to win. It was not easy, so he did not go to trouble Zhukov. Instead, he gave Vasilevsky a good scolding and asked him to "change his mind and focus on counterattack."

Knowing that the wind direction in Moscow had changed drastically, Rokossovsky also dispatched two armies to attack. By May 20, the Red Army had occupied half of the Caucasus grassland, even overtaking the Volga Dontsk line, and was only 200 meters away from Rostov. Many kilometers.

This situation made Stalin very happy, so he ignored Rokossovsky's initial wait-and-see attitude and stopped in front of the map with great interest. After looking at it again and again, he asked Vasilevsky: "If we can win Rostov, can the Germans be imprisoned in the Caucasus?"

"That's true in theory, but in practice there are a lot of difficulties."

"Tell me about it."

"First, the German army still has an outlet in the Caucasus, that is, by crossing the sea to the Crimean Peninsula through the Kerch Peninsula; second, there are too many German troops in the Caucasus. The Kleist Group has about 500,000 troops, and additional cooperation operations There are still more than 200,000 puppet troops and other servant armies; third, the Rostov front line will definitely face a strong German attack, and there is the Armored Group Army of the Huth Group to the north; fourth, Rostov is the location of the headquarters of the German Army Group South. , it is difficult to capture with the sea at its back; fifth, the German army has sea control, and they can use the navy to calmly deploy their forces in the Sea of ​​Azov and the Black Sea..."

"According to your opinion, Rostov does not need to be beaten? If he does, it will be in vain?"

Hearing the obvious displeasure in Stalin's tone, Vasilevsky sighed and said in another way: "It's not that we won't fight, but we can't fight too much. We should set a small goal first: strive to concentrate 100 or more people in the Caucasus To achieve this goal, we should not attack too fast, but should push forward slowly, drive some German troops to retreat through Rostov or through the Kerch Peninsula, and wait until there are about 300,000 left. Close the circle."

Stalin was full of joy and wanted to eat all the 600,000 to 700,000 Axis troops. When Vasilevsky said this, his heart suddenly went cold - the meaning of eating a German army group was completely different from that of severely damaging an army group.

"Another point that cannot be ignored is that the German army continued to launch fierce attacks on the central front, and our army was unable to withstand it. Our comrades even discovered the American SS Division during the offensive sequence..."

"Wait, those two American divisions that surrendered on Cape Verde?"

"Mainly this group of troops, but also American soldiers captured by the Germans during the African campaign."

"Well, Roosevelt failed to take care of his own troops and instead came to attack us." Stalin said angrily, "Fight back fiercely and focus on dealing with this American lackey force."

Vasilevsky smiled bitterly: "But the American soldiers don't seem to be weak in combat. They have sufficient equipment and supplies. I don't know if they were brainwashed by Hitler or something. In short, they are fierce and not afraid of death!"

"It's true, it's true!"

Hearing Vasilevsky talking about the Central Front, Stalin fell silent: In order to increase the strength of Central Asia and the southern wing, he kept drawing troops from the central front. So far, the German vanguard has already hit the Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk line. In more than a month, if the situation has not been fundamentally reversed, the entire central channel will be closed by the German army. By then, although the Soviet Union's north and south lines are still connected in the depth area, the transportation channel will be cut off. Can you still expect the broken place in Central Asia to continuously import equipment and supplies to the southern wing? That rugged road will sooner or later kill people.

The same situation exists on the northern line. In the future, both the north and south lines must be based on their own industrial and agricultural production levels to meet the needs of the war. This is obviously too difficult for the Red Army, which has concentrated more than 3 million troops.

Now the German and Red Army are like "mutually tightening their breath" in Go. Whoever can't hold it back will lose.

Hoffman was not afraid of Stalin competing with him. Not to mention that he still had the powerful weapon Thor's Hammer, he was not afraid even if the 600,000-700,000 troops in the Caucasus were really surrounded by the Red Army. The Azov Sea and the Black Sea could deliver enough supplies and food. If the Red Army wanted to deal with the 600,000-700,000 troops, it would not be possible to think about it without preparing for 2 million casualties. The Germans were upset about losing this number, but it would not be a serious injury. If the Red Army lost another 2 million, he didn't know where Stalin could find troops.

Historically, before the Normandy landing, Germany's permanent losses on the Eastern Front had exceeded 3 million (killed, missing, captured, and irrecoverable injuries). Now the number is only over 1 million, and even most of the captured personnel have been taken back, so there are more reserve troops. This not only allows Hoffman to have spare energy to open fire in South America, Africa, and the Middle East, but also the ability to withstand a relatively serious defeat.

In his original intention, he did not want to sacrifice even these 500,000, so Manstein's order to Kleist was very clear, to shrink quickly and fight on the inside.

In the end, Stalin did not get angry with Vasilevsky, and only ordered: "I hope to win a victory in a short time, and then I will have the capital for the next battle. Whether it is 250,000 or 500,000, I don't care. The key is that I want a victory, a major victory!"

"Comrade Stalin, we will do our best!"

On May 22, the Red Army in the south occupied Maikop and the Red Army in the north occupied Elista. At present, the Red Army has occupied more than half of the Caucasus region, but what worries Vasilevsky and Zhukov is that although the German control defense zone is gradually shrinking, there is no sign or intention of the German army to withdraw from the Caucasus region. On the contrary, resistance and short-term assaults are becoming more and more frequent and more and more severe.

What's more troublesome is that although they have made great achievements on the map in the past 20 days of attack, the results are very few. Most of the German troops can only be said to be "repelled" - if the German troops retreated voluntarily, they didn't capture many prisoners, but their losses were not small.

Chernyakhovsky's attack spearhead has been attrition. After advancing into the Transcaucasus, the casualties exceeded 100,000. Zhukov has replenished him twice in a row; the casualties of Chuikov's troops who blocked the mouth have also exceeded 30,000, forcing Zhukov to give him another army, while the strength of Scherner's troops in the basin has not decreased, because the German troops in Iran have replenished more than 5,000 people. After the airborne division was transferred to the Arabian Peninsula for defense, the German troops in Iran have dropped to just over 50,000. Even so, it is still more than enough to withstand the more than 70,000 troops left by Chernyakhovsky's offensive cluster.

After intensive deployment, the Turks finally stockpiled more than 200,000 troops on the northeastern border. Facing the Red Army, which was only a little over one-third of theirs, the Turks only had the idea of ​​defense and no intention of taking the initiative to attack - they waited for the Germans to repel the Red Army before rushing out to take advantage. Now that they heard that the Germans were retreating step by step in the Caucasus, they dared not make this idea.

On May 23, Guderian arrived in Rostov and reported to Marshal Manstein.

The first sentence he said when he arrived was: "The Thor's Hammer Army is ready and can carry out the mission!"

Manstein nodded and took Guderian to the map: "This is the main offensive direction I have considered for you..."

ps: I can't stand it today, so I can only update twice, thank you for your support...