The decisive battle against the Third Reich

Mehlis indeed "lived up to expectations" after arriving on the Kerch Peninsula.

As soon as he took up the "inspection work", he did two things:

The first thing was to order the Soviet soldiers who were building fortifications to stop what they were doing.

This is somewhat unimaginable, because the Kerch Peninsula is a strip area 18 kilometers wide and 75 kilometers deep. The Soviet army has a total of 347 tanks, 3,577 artillery pieces, 400 aircraft and 259,622 soldiers crowded here. They should use these Troops and resources were used to build defense lines one after another in the front, making it difficult for the German army to move forward, but Hermelis actually ordered to stop building fortifications.

For this reason, Tolbukhin, the chief of staff of the Crimean Front, found Hermelis and said angrily: "You can't do this, Comrade Hermelis, this will put our army in danger. If the enemy's If a tank attacks us, we won't have any time to react!"

"Don't worry about this, Comrade Tolbukhin!" Hermelis looked confident as he looked at the map, although he could hardly understand it: "As I said, building fortifications is a cowardly act. We must The purpose is to attack, understand? Attack! If we defeat the enemy before they attack, they will not have a chance to invade our position. Therefore, if we want to build fortifications, we must build them into the enemy's position. Go up!"

"But there is no conflict between building fortifications and attacking, Comrade Hemelis!" Tolbukhin insisted on his point of view: "We can launch an attack on the basis of complete fortifications, so that even if the attack fails, we will have the ability to retreat and garrison. The place!"

"I said it, Comrade Tolbukhin!" Hermelis raised his head and looked at Tolbukhin angrily: "Our mission is to attack, and we will never fail, so... why not let the soldiers Why don’t we save some energy and use it on offense?”

Tolbukhin realized that he could not convince Hermelis, so he could only reply helplessly: "Yes, Comrade Hermelis, I obey the order!"

"You can go!" Hermelis said.

The second thing Hemelis did was to remove Tolbukhin from his position as Chief of Staff and replace him with his assistant, Major General Venech, another political representative.

This can be said to be a foolish move or a stroke of genius.

It was said that it was a foolish move because the Chief of Staff of Major General Tolbukhin was an experienced commanding genius. He was dismissed just because he did not agree with Hermelis's approach... He is perhaps the most outstanding commander of the Crimean Front. member.

It is said to be a stroke of genius because Major General Tolbukhin was transferred to the deputy commander of the Stalingrad Military District shortly after he was dismissed, and then the commander of the 57th Group Army of the Stalingrad Military District. He commanded the Soviet army to play an important role in the defense of Stalingrad. important role. (Note: became Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1944)

While the Soviet Union was making intensive preparations for an attack, the German army was also making preparations for an attack.

This refers not only to Manstein's 11th Army, but to the entire Southern Army... They are waiting for Manstein to drive the Soviets out of the Kerch Peninsula or to achieve a decisive victory to liberate the Air Force from the direction of Crimea. It was a full-scale attack.

Therefore, from this aspect, Stalin was right to choose to launch a counterattack at this time, especially because the Soviet army had short supply lines and sufficient troops. They added more troops and resources after the defense of Moscow. In principle, It is possible to launch a counterattack.

The problem was that Stalin didn't understand his own troops... If the Soviet army was as well-trained as Rommel's Afrika Korps, there would be no problem. After all, offense is greater than defense, and the attacking side would have more strategic and tactical advantages.

However, most of the Soviet troops lacked training and communication equipment and could not coordinate. It would be fine if such troops were used for defense. After all, they have the courage and spirit to defend their homeland. If they stay in a trench, they know exactly what they have to do: destroy all enemies who try to pass through the trench.

If used for offense... they will be like a loose pile of sand that doesn't know how to cooperate with each other, rushing towards the enemy's defense line indiscriminately. Such an attack will not only fail to impact the enemy's defense line, but will also cause heavy casualties to themselves and consume their own resources and manpower. .

Therefore, the Battle of Stalingrad was not actually initiated by the Germans, but by Stalin.

In fact, it can be said that as long as Stalin understood what level his army was at, and then took a defensive rather than counterattack based on the actual situation, the German army would not have the strength to reach Stalingrad.

However, Stalin used his own imagination and data on paper to take it for granted that the Soviet army was stronger than the German army and then launched an attack rashly. This consumed the resources and strength that the Soviet army had worked hard to accumulate during this period to exceed the German army. As a result, the German army was overwhelmed by a counterattack.

Of course, these are not things that the German army needs to consider. In fact, this is beneficial to the German army.

At the meeting, Manstein and the officers were discussing the plan to attack the Kerch Peninsula in front of the map, while Qin Chuan was thinking about his own problem:

If this situation is favorable, it is actually unfavorable.

The advantage is that the German army can eliminate a large number of Soviet troops in defense and once again take the strategic initiative.

The disadvantage is that the next two directions of the German attack, namely the Caucasus and Stalingrad, both ended in failure, which would be a fatal blow to the German army and ultimately put the German army in a passive position in the entire strategy.

All in all, the most fundamental reason why the German army ended in a disastrous defeat in this battle was that they underestimated the enemy and thought that the Soviet army was just a ragtag group. In other words, Hitler had too much appetite and used a Southern Army Group to attack the Caucasus and the Caucasus at the same time. Stalingrad.

Anyone with some military knowledge knows that it is taboo to use one military unit to achieve multiple strategic goals.

Hitler obviously knew this, so he divided Army Group South into Army Groups A and B to attack the Caucasus and Stalingrad respectively.

However, this only resulted in the independence of command, without substantial changes in troops and supplies, which ultimately led to the defeat of Army Group South.

What troubles Qinchuan is that the German army seems to be heading this way now.

What can be done to prevent this failure from happening again?

What was different from before was that this time there were two battles before him: the Battle of Caucasus and the Battle of Stalingrad, and both battles fell into defeat almost at the same time. (Note: Although the Caucasus Campaign ended in October 1943, the Soviet army turned to counterattack in January 1943, and Stalingrad ended in failure on February 2 of the same year)