The Rise of the Third Reich

In the early morning of April 21, 1944, the sounds of gunfire, the roar of tank motors, and the shouts of "Ula! Ula!" that had been heard for many days on the Kalinin-Tver battlefield north of Moscow suddenly disappeared without a trace. No trace, as if it had never appeared. Except for sporadic exchanges of fire between the front lines and scouts of both sides, the battlefield was filled with tranquility between battles.

The Soviet Red Army's offensive has stopped!

However, all senior coalition officers on the battlefield knew that the fighting near Moscow was not over, and had not even really begun. The fierce fighting from April 5 to 21 was just the prelude to the Battle of Moscow.

"The Soviet Union stopped fighting? Is it because of the attack of Army Group Center?"

On the morning of the 21st, Marshal Hessmann, Chief of the General Staff of the German Wehrmacht, was finally convinced that the Soviet army on the Kalinin-Tver battlefield had stopped attacking. He asked Marshal Guderian, the first munitions director: "Can you confirm that the Soviet army is retreating across the board?"

If the Soviet army retreats across the board, then the German Army Group Northern should immediately launch a counterattack to prevent the Soviet Army's Northern Front Group from safely retreating to Moscow. However, if the Soviet army did not retreat across the board, the German Army Group North had better lie down and not move, lest the Soviets would be frightened and dare not engage in a decisive tank battle with the German army in the west of Moscow.

If those JS-2s and T-34/85s all retreat to Moscow, Olga's "old white men" and "new white men" will suffer - because Hersman is still thinking about getting it done. After the Soviet Union had a fight with the United States, he was unwilling to allow the German army to suffer too many casualties on the Soviet-German battlefield, otherwise the people's willingness to support the war would be significantly reduced. Therefore, Hessman planned to leave a strong city like Moscow to the White Army to deal with.

And the combat effectiveness of the White Army is far inferior to that of the German army. If the strength of the Moscow garrison is too strong, the possibility of the White Army's defeat in the attack still exists...

Therefore, the current battle outside Moscow is actually quite difficult to fight.

"It's not certain yet, the reconnaissance plane has not found anything." Guderian also had the same idea as Hessman, both hoping to consume the strength of the Soviet army as much as possible in the peripheral operations of Moscow. He said to Hessman: "And cut off The Soviet troops on the Red October Railway showed no signs of retreat... They seemed to be building fortifications."

"Building fortifications?" Hessmann was puzzled. "Do they want to continue to surround Paulus's army?"

"This is impossible," Guderian said. "In fact, Paulus was not surrounded...Borovitch east of the Red October railway line is still in our hands. I think the purpose of the Soviet army is just to force Paulus to The group retreated north so that most of its forces could be concentrated on the defense of Moscow."

Guderian guessed the Soviet army's intention at once - it was actually not difficult to guess. Everyone wanted to fight the annihilation battle, but what could be done if they couldn't win? Being able to push back the German northern front is always beneficial to the defense of Moscow.

"But they didn't achieve their goal." Hersman pressed his hand on the edge of the map table. "They have... given up now?"

"It is possible." Guderian said, "The ultimate goal of the Soviet army is not to fight us in the Kalinin-Tver area. If it cannot achieve the goal of forcing our army to retreat at a lower cost, it is also possible to give up. "

"Then why are they still stuck on the Red October Railway?" Hersman pointed to a red circle on the Red October Railway - there was about a Soviet division-level battle group there. "They could evacuate last night, why didn't they leave?"

Guderian shrugged, he didn't quite understand.

If the Soviet troops stuck on the Red October Railway retreated, Guderian would immediately judge that the Soviet counterattack north of Moscow had ended.

But the Soviet army did not do this. Not only did the Soviet troops on the Red October Railway not withdraw, they also did not withdraw in Valde, Andreapol, Toropets, Kuvshinovo, Tornok, Liku In Slavl and other places, the Red Army showed no signs of withdrawing.

The Soviet army seemed to have switched to defense on the spot after stopping the attack, forming a semicircular front. Although such a front did not encircle the Paulus Cluster of the coalition forces, it was very uncomfortable for Paulus. If it was not opened up, the Paulus Cluster and the German Army Group North would not be able to attack the north of Moscow freely. .

Maybe this is the purpose of the Soviet high command?

"May Day Town should be attacked," Guderian thought for a long time and said to Hersman, "but it cannot be defeated, otherwise it will scare the Soviets."

"Deliberately showing weakness?" Hersman asked.

"Yes." Guderian said, "I studied the battle reports and loss exchange rate statistics from April 5 to the present, and found that the advantage of armored troops over infantry is weakening. Not only can our infantry be able to repel the Soviet Union's troops more easily, A tank group attack, and even our tank group's counterattack, has about a 75% chance of being repelled by the Soviet infantry defense."

The changes in the battlefield situation discovered by the famous Soviet generals were also noticed by some on the German side.

"I believe that the Soviet command has also discovered this problem." Guderian said, "They now let the infantry deploy in Wuyi Town because they are confident in the infantry's anti-tank capabilities. And we can strengthen their confidence. , so that the retreat of the Soviet Northern Front Group may be delayed."

"Okay," Hersman continued to obey Guderian as usual (he was Guderian), but he still made a supplementary suggestion, "Let the air force suspend its air strikes on the industrial centers of the Volga-Ural region and concentrate on Forces bombed roads, bridges, and transportation hubs in Soviet-controlled areas around Moscow to paralyze the mobility of Soviet tank groups."

Air raids on the Volga-Urals industrial zone began as early as 1942, when the world revolution broke out. However, at that time, German aircraft were only conducting harassment bombing, not real strategic bombing.

It was not until the autumn of 1943, when Belarus basically controlled the Petrograd State, that the German Air Force began to station a large number of airports in the Petrograd State (all were former Soviet military airports, with many numbers and good facilities), and the Volga-Urals The industrial area also entered the "1,000-kilometer combat radius" of the Luftwaffe, and the bombing began in earnest.

Now, Hersmann was preparing to use the planes that bombed the Volga-Urals industrial area to destroy the Soviet communication lines around Moscow.

…

Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov, the commander of the 8th Guards Infantry Division of the Red Army, who was old and had a mustache similar to Hitler's, was riding a Kazakh horse around. Patrolling defensive positions.

His 14,000 Kazakh fighters have not experienced any real hard fighting in the past ten days of fighting. Therefore, it was a new force in the 7th Guards Tank Army, so on the night of April 20, it was transferred to a small town called "May Day Town" on the Red October Railway Line for defense.

Also arriving with the 8th Guards Division was a tank destroyer brigade assigned to the division, designated the 28th Guards Tank Destroyer Brigade, equipped with 39 SU-57s modified from BT-7 tanks, and 4 captured "Oliga" tank destroyers, 1 "Leopard" reconnaissance tank and 1 "Puma" armored vehicle.

Among them, the "Oliga" tank destroyer was an abandoned vehicle "picked up" on the battlefield, while the Leopard and Cougar were snatched from the Poles by "Red Germans" who penetrated behind enemy lines.

Because these six captured vehicles all had some armor-piercing shelling shells on them, they became Panfilov's trump card, specifically to deal with Tiger tanks.

However, even with 39 SU-57s and 5 armored vehicles equipped with armor-piercing discarding sabots, Panfilov still knew very well that his troops were about to fall into a hard battle.

According to General Fedyuninsky's order, the 8th Guards Infantry Division must hold on to May Day Town for a week before it can break through the forest to the west under darkness. However, the Kazakh soldiers, who knew they were going to be in a tough fight, still had high morale. They started working hard on the muddy ground since last night. In less than 20 hours, they completed the originally sloppy fortifications inside and outside. The exterior has been renovated.

Through the completely oriental faces, Major General Panfilov, a Russian (he was born near Moscow), saw a determination to defend the Soviet motherland that was completely different from many Russians!

It is true that the collectivization movement in Kazakhstan that began in 1932 also harmed many people. Hundreds of thousands of people starved to death, and 1.5 million people were exiled because they resisted collectivization.

But compared to the more brutal Tsarist Russia, the Kazakhs would rather live in the Soviet Union. After all, the painful collectivization movement was over, and the Kazakhs were now as much masters of the Soviet fatherland as the Russians. But if Tsarist Russia is completely restored, the Kazakhs will immediately become despicable inferiors.

Because Empress Olga is the little mother of Russia and the protector of the Eastern Orthodox Church... Even Panfilov, a loyal Christian, cannot deny this deep in his heart.

Empress Olga's position won her the loyalty of many Russians and Cossacks (the Cossacks were not a nationality, they were considered Russians during the Tsarist era), established a political power in a short period of time, and also had With a huge army, the Soviet-German war turned into the de facto second Soviet-Russian Civil War.

However, due to the same "Russia first" stance, Olga did not have any appeal to non-Russians in the Soviet Union - except for Russians who believed in Orthodox Christianity, no one else in the Soviet Union would regard a tsar. Consider it a liberator!

His firm opposition to the issue of Tsarist Russia is probably the reason why General Fedyuninsky will now hand over the most difficult and dangerous blocking task to the 8th Guards Infantry Division, an infantry division dominated by Kazakhs?

Just as he was thinking of this, the sound of air defense sirens suddenly sounded in Panfilov's ears, and the German air raid began!

Since the muddy roads affected the deployment of the German and French heavy artillery groups, the first thing the Panfilov Division encountered was not an overwhelming bombardment, but dozens of Fw-190F and Fw-190G series fighter-bombers and Hs A huge attack fleet composed of -129 anti-tank attack aircraft.

In addition, there are a dozen Fokker Zero D-type fighters and Fw-190A series fighters hovering in the surrounding airspace. Their mission is to shoot down any Soviet Red Air Force fighters that dare to approach the battlefield.