Struggle in Soviet Russia

"So, at least we must ensure that Trufanov's troops will not collapse in a short time when they are attacked by the German mechanized corps," Stalin pondered for a long time and said, "Where is the 4th Reserve Army? ?"

"The four divisions of the 4th Reserve Army," Vasilevsky thought for a while, and said, "including the four divisions of 167, 237, 240, and 340, they have been assigned to the 38th Army and are currently deployed in Voronezh. ."

"You mean that our three divisions, well, at least three infantry divisions are still in the reserve?" Comrade Stalin said.

"To be precise, there are six divisions," said Vasilievsky. "In the past two months, Comrade Apanashenko has sent three more divisions to the Reserve Army, including two tank divisions, but... "

"Very good, Comrade Joseph should be proud of his work," Comrade Stalin said happily before Vasilevsky was finished. "The General Staff can select three divisions from these six divisions to add Comrade Trufanov’s line, I think, at least one tank division should be included."

Vasilevsky turned his head and glanced at Vatutin, who was not only the commander of the Southwest Front Army, but also the deputy chief of staff of the General Staff.

"But according to the previous deployment, we should deploy three to four divisions to Leningrad," Vatutin said, "in order to strengthen the Leningrad Front's assault capability in breaking through the German blockade."

"Now, the ongoing battle of Stalingrad is the focus," Comrade Stalin said firmly.

After saying this, he turned around and walked towards his desk. After a few steps, he stopped again, reached out his hand and pointed at the map, and said in a more accented tone: "Stalingrad!"

"We must ensure that we can annihilate the German troops that destroyed Stalingrad," he said, slamming his fist on the table. "This is the main contradiction! We must ensure that no accidents happen, understand? !"

Including Vasilievsky, what can the remaining three people say? What's more, for Vatutin and Rokosovsky, Comrade Stalin's decision was most beneficial to them, because they were all participants in the Battle of Stalingrad, and the progress of the war there is closely related to their interests.

"Then, the arrangement of the air strike..." After confirming the issue of troop deployment, Vasilievsky turned the subject and asked.

Comrade Stalin was filling his pipe with shredded tobacco. He waved his hand when he heard this, which meant to let him continue.

Immediately, Vasilevsky gave a brief account of a large-scale air strike currently planned by the General Staff. Of course, this was for Victor.

As the chief intelligence officer of the alliance, Victor also has a certain understanding of the current Soviet aviation situation.

In general, after a year of recovery last year, the Soviet aviation force has now completely recovered. The Ural aircraft factories are operating at full capacity. In just one year, they have provided 25,000 aircraft to the aviation force. Various types of fighters. Although from the second half of this year, various aircraft manufacturers have begun to produce some new models, including Mi-3, La-5, and Ya-9, the monthly supply of 2,000 fighters can still be guaranteed.

In terms of pilots, a large number of pilots trained by aviation clubs and pilot clubs are also continuously transported to the aviation queue. As a result, the advantages of the Soviet army in air combat have become more and more obvious.

According to Vasilevsky, with the advancement of the Battle of Stalingrad, especially the formation of the encirclement of the German Sixth Army, the German army has assembled a large number of aviation troops on the front line of Stalingrad. This caused the German air force in other directions to be greatly weakened.

In the past week, in order to deliver supplies to the besieged 6th Army, the German 4th Air Force has launched a week-long large-scale air battle with the Soviet Army. It can be said that, except for the last two days, due to the influence of Blizzard. In addition to the stagnation of the air battle, for the rest of the time, the air battle over Stalingrad was staged almost every day.

In this situation of continuous air combat, the Soviet aviation did suffer huge losses, but the German losses were also not small. According to the aviation statistics, the Germans shot down more than 100 fighters in a week. More than 250 transport planes and bombers were shot down.

The General Staff believes that this large-scale air battle, similar to the war of attrition, is beneficial to the Soviet army under current conditions. However, since it is an air battle, it should not be limited to Stalingrad, but on the entire battlefield. Expand within the scope, so as to maximize the blood of the Luftwaffe.

Affected by this, the General Staff even believes that from now on, the aviation unit should be more active in looking for fighters, and take the initiative to force the Germans to launch decisive battles with them, and annihilate the German air supremacy in the process of attrition.

After Vasilevsky had elaborated on the plan of the General Staff, he began to inquire about the situation of the German troops advancing to the airfield.

Because he did his homework in advance and combined with the original accumulation, Victor could easily deal with such problems. He started from the Taganrog forward airport of the German army on the coast of the Azov Sea, and then went to Chernyshevskaya. Going forward to the airport, using nearly forty minutes, the seventeen main forward airports of the German army were recounted one by one.

Including the locations of these airports, the deployment of air defenses, the number of fighters a month ago, etc., they all said in detail.

Comrade Stalin was obviously very satisfied with his performance. Although the leader did not have much praise, he said: This kind of cooperation between the intelligence department and the Red Army system is what he hopes to see.

Before leaving the office of Comrade Stalin, Victor made a special request to Vasilevsky.

He hoped that during the Battle of Stalingrad, when Soviet troops were able to encircle and annihilate German troops, they would pay attention to the seizure and capture of cryptographic machines, radio stations, cryptographic manuals, transmitters and decoders.

To be honest, before Victor took over the intelligence work, the NKVD’s military intelligence work was a mess. However, even after he took over, the Intelligence Agency’s work on intercepting German communications did not have much to do. improvement.

The reasons for this are complex, and among the various reasons, the most important one is the lack of progress in cracking communication passwords.

Different from what people imagined in later generations, the German communication password could not be decoded by a simple cipher book. They used a cipher machine combined with a key to realize communication encryption. Therefore, they caught a decoder and sent a report. The officer, or getting a codebook, is not enough to crack the German communication code.

To be more specific, the German army uses a "riddle" cipher machine, and in conjunction with the cipher machine, there are as many as more than fifty keys. Used in conjunction with the corresponding keys, the cipher machine randomly generates a set of ciphers. .

The difficult point is that the keys are changed every day, which means that the passwords used for communication are different every day, and this complex and highly random encryption system makes the technical staff of the intelligence department nowhere to start.

To overcome this problem, the only way is to get enough cryptographic machines and keys, and then a dedicated code **** will find out the rules.

But so far, there are too few cryptographic machines in the hands of intelligence agencies, with only two, which is simply not enough to support related deciphering work.

For this request made by Victor, Vasilievsky would naturally not refuse. After all, this work is for the military in the final analysis.

…………………………

Coming out of the Kremlin, the heavy snow was still falling, and it didn't mean to go down at all.

Although it was just after four o'clock in the afternoon, the sky had dimmed because of Blizzard, and even the street lights on the red square were lit up.

"Where are we going, comrade committee?" Varenka asked when he drove back.

"Send me back," Victor rubbed his face, and dealt with Comrade Stalin for a few hours. He was more tired than he had been working all day, and it was already at this point, and he was almost off work when he returned to the game.

"Wait, I'll get off here," Sophia heard him and said hurriedly, "I'm going to Gum, I heard that some Americans have been here recently..."

Speaking of this, she stopped suddenly, knocked on the car door, and said, "I won't go with you."

What Gum is talking about is the GUM State Department Store on the opposite side, and now Moscow is even the largest State Department Store in the entire Union.

At the beginning of the war, the store was closed for a while, especially during the Battle of Moscow, but after a decisive victory in the Battle of Moscow, the store reopened. Compared with the pre-war period, there were even more products sold in stores for ordinary citizens, mainly from Britain, the United States and other countries.

"Then go together," Victor thought for a while, and said with a smile.

It's a shame to say that since his rebirth, even if he has been transferred to Moscow for so long, he has never been to the GUM store, not even once. Although many of the rations given to him were distributed by this national store, he never came to receive it himself.

"But, comrade committee, we have no guards," Varenka said hesitantly.

"Aren't you a guard?" Victor stretched out his hand and patted him on the head, and said with a smile, "Besides, this is Moscow. How can there be so many people who want to kill me?"

"Well, then," Varenka muttered after correcting his hat that had been slapped crooked, turning the steering wheel and drove the car in the direction of the GUM store.

After a while, the car stopped outside the store, Victor pushed the door and got out of the car, first looked up at the palace-like mall, and then stepped towards the entrance.