Battle of the Third Reich

In the face of the current situation, Germany can adopt two strategies. One is to copy Hitler’s tricks and initiate a pre-emptive attack. Before the Soviets complete the preparations for the war, the other side is caught by surprise and the Soviet Union is deployed on the border as much as possible. Groups of heavy soldiers on the front line destroy their technical equipment and annihilate their vital forces.

The second is to carry out active defense. A solid defense line consisting of minefields, fortification areas, and various tactical support points is established in central and eastern Europe. A defensive force that is sufficient to deter the Soviet army must also be deployed on the defense line. It is necessary to prepare a certain number of armored forces as a mobile force, and at the same time, a large reserve team can be quickly assembled in the rear. Once the war suddenly breaks out, the Germans will rely on the defense line to weaken the Soviets’ offensive strength layer by layer and start a tug of war with the other party. It spent all its vital energy and technical equipment until the Soviet attack began to decay, then the reserve team launched a large-scale counterattack, and finally pushed the front line back to the Soviet Union.

At present, it is impossible to copy the former strategy. The Soviet Union is already prepared for Germany. Even if the Germans launch a sudden attack, they will no longer be able to create the record in history and achieve what they need to defeat the Soviet Union in Germany. Before all kinds of reserves, Xu Jun will not repeat the mistake of the former prime minister.

So now the Germans can choose a strategy, and there is only one defensive battle left. In fact, no matter which strategy the high-level chooses, the threat to the German soldiers will be the same. Whether it is offensive or defensive, they will definitely encounter To the enemy of the infantry, the powerful Soviet armored troops.

In history, shortly after the German infantry stepped on the Soviet land, they were counterattacked by the Soviet armored forces, and a short board of the German infantry was exposed in the battle. Only a few of them received individual anti-tank training.

In the German Army’s tactics, all anti-tank tasks are assigned to professional units, such as the anti-tank companies in the various infantry regiments and the anti-tank squads in the various infantry companies.

The anti-tank company is mainly equipped with a 37-mm anti-tank gun, which has become a knocking brick in the French battle. It feels difficult to deal with some French medium-sized tanks, not to mention the group of steel monsters currently being replaced by the Soviet Union.

According to the original history, the German army will first replace this kind of weak anti-tank weapon with a 50mm anti-tank gun. As a result, the German army did not realize that it was difficult for the 50mm anti-tank gun to compete with the armored artillery. The main Soviet tanks of the Soviet Union confronted, and finally the Germans increased the caliber of the anti-tank artillery of the infantry to 75 mm, which finally contained the Soviet armor.

Xu Jun will certainly not waste that time. Rhine Steel has already started mass production of 7.5mmpak40, and Krupp has also started to produce 7.5mmpak41.

The latter is a cone-bore gun. The caliber of the barrel is gradually reduced from back to front. The shells are gradually backlogged during the movement in the barrel, which makes the warhead obtain a very high initial velocity. When using conventional charges, the initial velocity of the warhead is as high as One thousand two hundred and sixty meters per second.

When it launched its dedicated tungsten core armor-piercing projectile, the power it showed was quite amazing. For a homogeneous steel target plate inclined at a thirty-degree inclination angle of one kilometer away, this gun actually reached a penetration of 140 millimeters. depth.

If the shooting distance is shortened to 500 meters, this is the most common combat distance of the infantry company platoon anti-tank gun. The penetration depth of this gun has reached 172 millimeters of frustration, which indicates that there is no A Soviet tank can resist this artillery attack.

The production process of this anti-tank artillery is more complicated, and the use of alloy materials, so the price and cost of use are relatively high, because the use of the cone bore mode, the life of the barrel is very short, about 500 rounds, and then it must be Replace the barrel.

However, this does not seem to be a problem for Xu Jun. If an anti-tank gun can finish six hundred rounds and it has not been killed by the enemy, then it is fully qualified to change another barrel, because according to half the hit rate At least three hundred armored targets have been killed by this group.

Because of its superior armor-piercing performance, the pak41 75mm cone-bore gun almost replaced the pak40 75mm anti-tank gun. Unfortunately, because of the lack of tungsten ore in Germany in history, it was only suitable for launching tungsten core armor-piercing projectiles, so After Hitler ordered to reduce the output of this ammunition, the Germans finally retained only 150 such anti-tank guns, and the remaining pak41 quietly disappeared from the German sequence after the ammunition and barrels were consumed.

But now the Germans have no such concerns. In addition to the Austrian tungsten mine being developed, Germany also imported a large amount of tungsten ore from Portugal and Bolivia. At the same time, the contract with China also resumed the pre-war tungsten sand trade.

However, there are not many tungsten mines controlled by the Chongqing government. Most of these products need to be repaid to the United States to deduct loans obtained from the Export-Import Bank of the United States. This transaction is called a "tungsten sand loan contract". The US Export-Import Bank provided Chongqing with a US$15 million loan to purchase US-produced food and raw materials. Chongqing needs to provide US$30 million within five years. U.S. dollar tungsten sand is used for repayment.

Let’s not talk about how unfair this transaction is. At this time, some people are willing to lend money to Chongqing. It is already very good. After all, the Japanese army continued to sing forward in 1940. The situation facing the Chongqing government is really not optimistic. Once Jiang Zhongzheng fails, The loan is equivalent to drifting in water. Of course, Americans are not here for charity, and they do not have 100% profit. How can they be willing to take this risk?

In 1949, under the leadership of Roosevelt, the United States passed the Reserve Important Military Supplies Act. Congress is planning to allocate $100 million over four years to purchase 17 strategic materials that the United States must have.

As a result, within half a year, they spent the 25 million US dollars budget that year, all used to purchase five strategic materials of tungsten, tin, manganese, chromium and rubber. For tungsten sand alone, they imported more than 1.485 million pounds, which translates to almost 670-80 tons, of which 60% was imported from China. Before the war, in order to contain Germany, the United Kingdom snapped up a large number of tungsten sands from Spain and Portugal. As a result, the hoarding of Britain and the United States raised the prices of tungsten sands and other strategic resources in the international market.

But now because of the end of the European War, and with the resignation of Roosevelt's cabinet, the US government has stopped hoarding strategic materials, and the prices of various raw materials on the international market have gradually fallen back to their original levels.

As for the tungsten sands hoarded in the UK, they add up to almost half of Portugal's output. As a result, except for what is needed for domestic production, almost the rest is eaten by Germany.

Germany now has no shortage of tungsten, so Xu Jun can mass-produce the pak41 cone-bore gun. This weapon will allow the German company platoon infantry units to also have firepower that can fight against heavy tanks at long distances.

As for another conventional pak40 anti-tank gun, although its armor-piercing ability is not as good as a cone-bore gun, it is enough to deal with most Soviet armored vehicles. This anti-tank gun has its own advantages, that is, it can fire a variety of ammunition For example, conventional and high-explosive bombs, in addition to anti-tank missions, can also support the regular combat of infantry. In contrast, the function of the pak41 cone-bore gun appears to be a single point.

In Xu Jun’s plan, pak41 will be assigned to armored and armored grenadier units and some fortification defense units, and pak40 will be assigned to conventional infantry units, especially fortification defense units. After the war, they will definitely encounter enemy forces. Of heavy armored units of the raid and siege, so it is necessary to be equipped with powerful anti-tank firepower.

Because they are assigned to grass-roots infantry units, the movement of these two artillery units is still based on the conventional towing type. Taking the wheeled gun mount into account, the total weight of the two guns is about 1.4 tons, of which the cone The cannon is also more than one hundred kilograms lighter, and can be towed by any kind of military vehicle. It can also be dragged by animal power and human power when necessary. It will be more difficult when traveling off-road. This problem has existed in the original history. It is only possible to lighten the light field tractor after it is fully equipped with German troops.

In addition to these wheeled traction models, Xu Jun is also planning to mount them on various motor vehicles, such as wheeled armored vehicles and semi-tracked personnel carriers, and can even be temporarily installed on trucks to become a mobile anti-tank firepower platform.

If nothing unexpected happens, Xu Jun believes that with the power of these two anti-tank guns, it is enough for the German grassroots infantry to drag them to fight the entire war.

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